Brother using Linux, maybe forever?

[LaRoza]

To give everyone a background, I have a brother, we live with our mother. We are both in school, he uses Windows XP and I use Ubuntu.

He previously had no interest in Linux, but yesterday, after I installed Beryl, I asked him to look at it (because I thought it looked cool). After showing off the cube, he asked if you could make the top stay on the screen, I got up, and told him to play around with it. I couldn't get him out of my chair! Playing with the Beryl settings is fun, i should have none. He wanted to see the office apps, I showed him OpenOffice, he seemed amazed at the programs I had, I only installed 2 of them myself.

I burned him a disk, and he started using it live on his computer. He never saw a bootable disk before and was quite impressed.

I think he is going to install soon.:)

One victory for Ubuntu.

[aroch1]

In the process of switching my family as we speak!!!

[loathsome]

I'm trying to switch my friends :) They're like "NEVER AFFKAKA VISTA GOTZ UBER EFFEKTS", then I pop up Beryl and they just ._.

I won't even bother trying to swtich my family. "Omg webcamz msn lol, firefox wunt work with piczo" etc ..

[Brunellus]

I'm trying to switch my friends :) They're like "NEVER AFFKAKA VISTA GOTZ UBER EFFEKTS", then I pop up Beryl and they just ._.

I won't even bother trying to swtich my family. "Omg webcamz msn lol, firefox wunt work with piczo" etc ..
Webcams and skype are non-trivial barriers in many families. When my father was away for a long time, he and my mother used skype video. Skype has no video in Linux, nor does the kernel support my mother's webcam (there is a driver for my father's, but it's sitll kind of flaky).

[Quake]

MSN Messenger is biggest culprit here. Until amsn support Web conferencing (Webcam+audio), My family won't want to switch to Ubuntu.

[Brunellus]

MSN Messenger is biggest culprit here. Until amsn support Web conferencing (Webcam+audio), My family won't want to switch to Ubuntu.
when did everybody start moving to MSN? Most of my friends are still on AIM...was there a big instant-messenging marketshare shift? And when did it happen?

[Quake]

About my case: My family regularly use MSN Messenger to talk (webcam+audio) to my family in Europe and Morocco. And as far as I know, Skype in Linux doesn't have webcam support...

So I'm just... waiting patiently... the day amsn introduces audio conferencing...

[maniacmusician]

when did everybody start moving to MSN? Most of my friends are still on AIM...was there a big instant-messenging marketshare shift? And when did it happen?
More families and individuals have started to buy computers in the last 4-5 years. The default IM client that comes with their OS is MSN messenger, and most of them use it regularly.

[scrooge_74]

About my case: My family regularly use MSN Messenger to talk (webcam+audio) to my family in Europe and Morocco. And as far as I know, Skype in Linux doesn't have webcam support...

So I'm just... waiting patiently... the day amsn introduces audio conferencing...

Try using KOPETE web cams works pretty well (I know it is for KDE, but it works very well in Gnome too)

[Quake]

Try using KOPETE web cams works pretty well (I know it is for KDE, but it works very well in Gnome too)

Amsn support webcams too. But it's the audio conference that I'm waiting for. Does Kopete support audio? If that's so then maybe I'm set for some conversion. :P

[sharperguy]

My mum and her BF are using ubuntu now.

They both new I used it but didn't have any interest in it until vista came out :P

They do not want to have to buy a new computer once XP loses support so they are trying out ubuntu as much as possible and at the moment arn't having too much trouble. I've had to help them with a few things like codecs and RAR files etc. The only real problem has been DVD playback. I don't really use DVD's so I don't have any experiance in the area.

Anyways I want to get my brother using ubuntu as well. In fact he really wants me to as well but at the moment I can't get his wireless dongle to work and I just know he wont use it if windows is there and it has a network connection.

It's unfortunate though because he's quite young and at risk of getting viruses/spyware etc, and even my 6 yo sister likes ubuntu because of gcompris/tuxpaint etc :P