[Techtalk] What do you allthink?

[pmurphre at indiana.edu]

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> Apart from using my Tuxman mug at work and explaining why we have to

> take the Netscape links off our desk tops when the $M$ Foundation 
> inspects our labs?  :(  We have linux servers but our clients are
all 
> strictly windoze.  Any suggestions on how to convert supposedly 
> intelligent academics from the dark side of the force are welcome.

HI, well all I do is simply state, whenever anyone complains about
some horrible fault w/ windows about how much better linux is--don't
know how much this helps on a grand scale, btu at least it is positive
word-of-mouth.

as for the academics--I am currently a PhD student, an
academic-in-training, if you will.  Now I am in the humanities, not
the sciences (as I assume you are by mention of labs), but my best
suggestion would be to make linux as simple and non-scary as possible.
 Now this may be a gross generalization, but I imagine that most
academics would be impatient with having to learn a lot before being
able to use their machine--so keeping them away from anything
requiring the use of the command line would probably be the best
bet--essentially everything else works just like many other desktops
(only better!!!) and would probably be easy to adapt to.  Since the
command line requires specialized knowledge probably unfamiliar to the
academics concerned, they might not be willing to invest the time to
learn that end of things--but if they are intelligent, as a certainly
assume, they should be able to pick up something like KDE or GNOME
without much trouble--don't you think?

anyways, jsut some musings

ciao,
murph