On Tue, 29 Oct 2013 11:01:36 +0000 Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com allegedly wrote:
On 29/10/2013 10:24, Mark Rogers wrote:
[SNIP]
I just want to pick up quickly on something you said:
Linux and it causes them problems, all it will do is "validate" their eventual decision to spend money on a Windows PC, even if they don't like the Windows 8 it arrives with. (On the why not W7 question: the PC's we've looked at (at around the £250 mark) are Win8 Home so no option to use Win7.)
Check out the Zoostorm boxes on ebuyer.com that come with no OS installed.
http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Computer/cat/Desktop-PC/Zoostorm?sort=price+asce...
They range in price from £149.99 to £499 all inc vat.
I will second that. I bought one of the zoostorm laptops three or four months ago and have been very impressed with it. It was good not to have to pay the MS tax only to trash the installation.
If you have any spare kit, or if one of their machines is capable of running VirtualBox, I'd recommend letting them have a play with a couple of distros. They are likely to find KDE easier to take to than Gnome, or especially Unity. It is clear to me that Cinnamon offers the "easiest" route, simply because it's easier to partially replicate the look-and-feel of XP, along with the functionality. Also, Live DVDs can be a boon here, requiring little effort to trial.
Also seconded, with the obvious caveat that live DVD versions (with the exception of those such as Porteus which run entirely in RAM) tend to be on the slow side. This won't be helped by old hardware.
At this stage I think the actual distro is irrelevant. What you need to do, as Laurie and others have said, is actually trial a few desktops with the potential users. Be honest with them. Tell them that they are going to have to change anyway, and explain that there is rich set of alternatives to the MS platform. Give them XFCE, LXDE, FLWM, Openbox etc. alongside the heavyweights such as KDE, Gnome or Unity and ask /them/ what they like. At the moment we are trying to second guess a bunch of MS users when we all have used Linux in preference to that for years (and we all have different views of what makes a good distro....). You never know, they might even like Unity. I've heard that some people do.
Mick
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net
---------------------------------------------------------------------