How hard is it to turn someone to Ubuntu?

[Puzzled Guy]

Hi,

Title explains it. Give your own story.

[Techsnap]

Let people use what they want and don't force your OS choice on them.

[Puzzled Guy]

This is just a poll. Not asking for advice on how to persuade them.

[Zimmer]

XP gets trashed by Trojans and cruft.... user tries system restore and Windows reboots..but is unstable due to unfinished Windows Updates.. then Windows fails to boot .

What? No XP CD to rescue/reinstall system? Oh Dear!(or other more colourful expletives...)

The RESTORE disks supplied by OEM make a brave attempt at putting machine back as it was (a few years ago!!) but make a mess of the partition table etc... leading to unstable fresh install awaiting many many years of XP updates......

Patience runs out after a few days , disk is wiped and repartitioned and Ubuntu installed (in around 45 mins).

Success! (safe in the knowledge that if it does go pear-shaped again we have the disks and the knowledge to put it right...)

Downside.. need to sell Lexmark All-In-One printer (now a paperweight).. but with current prices a printer is cheaper than a retail Windows CD...

[montres]

it's not very difficult, if you don't mind providing support to the convert for the first few weeks.

[nerdtron]

It's hard dude. Most people I know are dependent on MS Office and some Adobe products. Also they are used to "double clicking">accept>next>next>successful install.
I find it hard to persuade them and use an OS that does thing differently. If it's does not operate like windows, they find it hard to switch.
And most of all, they scream at me when they try to click an .exe file and does nothing. I mean, they find it hard to use Ubuntu. They blame Linux for not being user friendly but I think their only problem is familiarity and not user friendliness.
I'm surprised that most of them blames viruses when their system slows down or becomes unstable. But they just re-install windows. They don't consider switching to any OS other than windows.
I feel very sad for them.

[ubunterooster]

A spirit to adventure is needed. Try asking if they play with LEGO bricks; if yes then they will likely be very open. (works for me when spreading the word online)

[Sean Moran]

In countries where one's native tongue is also the local language, it seems easier, for back in Australia, I did once give my Mother a Live CD and she actually put the darned thing in her CD drive and booted it for a few minutes! Here in Thailand, nobody that I've given a Live-CD to has even taken it out of the package - Ubuntu antarai! (Linooz- dangerous)

[standingwave]

XP gets trashed by Trojans and cruft.... user tries system restore and Windows reboots..but is unstable due to unfinished Windows Updates.. then Windows fails to boot .

Yeah, this happened to my nephew. I had set him up with some anti-spyware/malware programs but I don't think he wasn't very diligent. I booted Ubuntu from a CD and brought up Nautilus -> Computer and we could see all his drives and partitions. We quickly navigated to his windows user folder and found the folders he wanted recovered. We plugged in his brand new external drive and it immediately showed up in Nautilus. We started the file transfer and then I asked him if he would like to check his email while the files were transferring. He had been off the internet for about a week.

He was like, "We're on the Internet right now?" I said sure, and brought up Firefox. By the time he was done handling his email and the files were done transferring, he was sold. "I want this," he said. So we went ahead and did the full install. Then I set him up with 'restricted areas' (how easy has that become in the last couple of years?!) and made sure everything (Flash, Java, codecs, etc.) was working and then we copied everything back from the external drive. While that file transfer was going, I gave him a short GNOME tutorial.

This is going to be my SOP for working on borked windows systems in the future. I have a Linux Rescue CD and could have done it all via the terminal or maybe Midnight Commander but why not give the person a little taste of the modern Linux Desktop?

[fela]

Stupid poll, depends on the person and their circumstances.