Localhoste
November 18th, 2009, 06:45 AM
Hello~
This is quite a block of text that's mostly about me and my life, so it's probably boring. I don't expect many people to read or reply to this, I just want to give the people who do want to reply, well, an occasion to do so.
So I'm a Computer Science student (first year...) and have been using Ubuntu for a year and a half now, and like it so much that I want to convert people to it. I see all my classmates rocking their Windows netbooks or their fancypants OS X shiny laptops but I feel like they're missing out by not learning about Ubuntu or Linux in general. It is probably going to occupy a great place in their lives if they go for a CS degree, especially if they're going to become sysadmins and such... Obviously most of them want to be games developers but whatever.
In particular, I have a certain close friend that I've known since high school and he's been using Windows the whole time. I force-taught him web development, basis of PHP/MySQL, etc., but he seems reluctant to learn new things, which I think is a crucial skill in computer science, IT, etc.
So far I've told him what Linux is, and I've shown him my own laptop running Kubuntu. I tried the price argument, the good community support argument, and as a last resort, I showed him some cool Compiz effects, Ear Candy, etc., you know, the stuff you can't find anywhere else. But he simply refuses to learn more about it, he says that his Windows does everything he wants it to do, and thus Ubuntu can either (in a perfect world) do as well as Windows, or (in a not-so-perfect-world) only do a subset of what he can currently do; thus there is no reason to spend time changing and learning a new OS and stuff. I did push him hard enough to make him try the Live CD but he said it was way too slow, too ugly, and it sucked because he couldn't get the "cube" to work (obviously, since he was using only the Live CD). I told him those problems won't be there once he installs it but he said it would just be a waste of time and feared losing his data when partitioning.
So I guess I could phrase my question like this: How can I "open his mind" to make him want to learn new things, or at least open it enough to convince him to try Ubuntu a bit more? How can I try to convert such a type of person? (Or should I not try at all?)
This is quite a block of text that's mostly about me and my life, so it's probably boring. I don't expect many people to read or reply to this, I just want to give the people who do want to reply, well, an occasion to do so.
So I'm a Computer Science student (first year...) and have been using Ubuntu for a year and a half now, and like it so much that I want to convert people to it. I see all my classmates rocking their Windows netbooks or their fancypants OS X shiny laptops but I feel like they're missing out by not learning about Ubuntu or Linux in general. It is probably going to occupy a great place in their lives if they go for a CS degree, especially if they're going to become sysadmins and such... Obviously most of them want to be games developers but whatever.
In particular, I have a certain close friend that I've known since high school and he's been using Windows the whole time. I force-taught him web development, basis of PHP/MySQL, etc., but he seems reluctant to learn new things, which I think is a crucial skill in computer science, IT, etc.
So far I've told him what Linux is, and I've shown him my own laptop running Kubuntu. I tried the price argument, the good community support argument, and as a last resort, I showed him some cool Compiz effects, Ear Candy, etc., you know, the stuff you can't find anywhere else. But he simply refuses to learn more about it, he says that his Windows does everything he wants it to do, and thus Ubuntu can either (in a perfect world) do as well as Windows, or (in a not-so-perfect-world) only do a subset of what he can currently do; thus there is no reason to spend time changing and learning a new OS and stuff. I did push him hard enough to make him try the Live CD but he said it was way too slow, too ugly, and it sucked because he couldn't get the "cube" to work (obviously, since he was using only the Live CD). I told him those problems won't be there once he installs it but he said it would just be a waste of time and feared losing his data when partitioning.
So I guess I could phrase my question like this: How can I "open his mind" to make him want to learn new things, or at least open it enough to convince him to try Ubuntu a bit more? How can I try to convert such a type of person? (Or should I not try at all?)