I always found the labs at Uni annoying to use so I did most of my projects/assignments at home. First using Watcom C++ under DOS/Desqview and then with Linux once I had seen the light :). A lot of CS undergrads probably have PC's at home. Why not encourage them to install Linux at home... Give out distro discs at the presentations. I would suggest something friendly and easy to use (ie, not Debian or Gentoo). Fedora Core 1 is probably an OK choice. But one of the KDE centric distros might also be nice. If people want to "try" Linux before they commit to installing it (and potentially blowing their Hard Disks away) then Knoppix discs would be good. Regards On Sun, 2004-02-15 at 06:35, Jamie Curtis wrote:
I agree, I think you might need a "cross over" component that explains how to migrate your existing windows into Linux.
And compatibility - "I can't use Linux as I need to be able to read and write Microsoft Office documents". "OF course I won't be able to play WAV or mp3 files on linux will I?". "I need to be able to open Windoes images (by this they usually mean GIF or JPEG) so linux is no use to me". "Linux is Unix isn't it? I couldn't function without my mouse and a window". (Hence my worries about the first few seminars.)
While we may need to show people answers to these questions to make Linux more attractive, we are not trying to convert these people. They are going to use Linux, they have to and have no choice if they are to complete their courses. What we are aiming for primarily with these training is to help the students use Linux more effectivly for their course requirements (hence the focus on bash, editors etc). Hopefully if we do a good job of that we will get students interested in Linux in general. We will make sure that they realise that WLUG is there for them when/if they want to make the transition to Linux on machines at home. Teaching them some things like Linux gaming, wine and even gimp and mp3 players isn't going to be achieving our goal of helping them with their course related requirements.
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