Best Live Linux For Christmas Giving? 594
trustedserf writes "This year I am including a bootable Live Linux CD in many of my Christmas cards. As I'll be making the copies myself I may even change the default desktop background to something personal, or Christmasy before running it off on cheap CD-Rs. The objective is to show people the easiest possible route to using a linux desktop so that they will be: A) Aware and B) Pleasantly surprised. About Christmas they may also have more time to try it out too. Naturally, I'm thinking of Gnoppix, but there are other options.. I use KDE, so I have to decide between it and Gnome. Bearing in mind my objectives, what distro would you choose. Also, importantly, is it possible any of them will damage their hardware (monitors with incorrect refresh etc.) I would be *very* unhappy if that happened. How many of them would fail to boot, leaving a bad impression? Which way would you go about it for maximum "WOW"."
Stuff it with games (Score:5, Insightful)
Think Again (Score:5, Insightful)
I would suggest pulling some of your more technically inclined relatives/friends aside, and just show them Linux running on your machine.
Wow (Score:0, Insightful)
you must be the tech guy in your family (Score:5, Insightful)
If there's one thing I know... (Score:5, Insightful)
GUI (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
Honestly.
Don't give people these discs, unless everyone in your family is a geek no one will even use it or know what to do with it.
Most people who use Windows don't even know how to install that and that's really easy.
And the 2004 uber Dork award goes to... (Score:5, Insightful)
lame gift.
Give em a linux powered media player or something useful...
What about putting photos and music on it and use it as the card itself...
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
...and the ones that are geeks will already know where to get it if they want it.
Re:Stuff it with games (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Firefox
2. SuperTux
3. The GIMP
4. GAIM
5. OO.o
6. Solitare
That should show them that they can do everything they want; games, web browsing, photo editing, and word processing. All the basics.
PS- If you can, make sure that Firefox is ready to go with java, flash, and shockwave
What does linux have to do with Christmas (Score:5, Insightful)
If one of my relatives tried to use a christmas card to evangelize an operating system, they'd be spending Christmas outside in the barn.
Re:And the 2004 uber Dork award goes to... (Score:1, Insightful)
Ooh.... this guy deserves an insightful... The idea went from a lame-geek gift to a pretty cool idea.
Make it auto-run a slide-show or video of friends/family/pr0n/whatever (depending on the audience), and it'd be a decent gift showing how Linux can do something.
Re:Think Again (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously
Cheers,
IT
Re:you must be the tech guy in your family (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stuff it with games (Score:5, Insightful)
Knoppix Hacks (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea of giving them just a CD though? Lame. The CD with some decent instructions tailored to their needs, if they actually have them then maybe you've got something there. I'm personally going to go check the book out in the store before I order it for him.
Why not make it the Christmas card? (Score:3, Insightful)
How about... if it were the Christmas card, and you gave instructions on how to boot it, and that it's *safe* and doesn't install anything to their hard drive. Some people might try it out.
Have it boot up, pop open a browser and show some online christmas card that you know is safe.
After that closes, have a stocking or something that says "click me" which is really a folder with a bunch of games in it.
That's more like something someone would want...
Re:If there's one thing I know... (Score:3, Insightful)
Include Windoze OSS software (Score:2, Insightful)
People don't know how to boot off a CD. You'll need to include directions for that, and it's difficult, since every BIOS has a different method.
Also, tell people that they should keep it around even if they don't understand it. A friend recently re-imaged her computer (at Dell's recommendation) because some DLL was missing or something. The data on their disk could have been saved with a bootable CD.
A misconception that I've recently heard is that OSS isn't worth anything if you're not a programmer. Not sure how that plays into your card, but it was a new one on me.
Re:Think Again (Score:5, Insightful)
So this isn't something you give out to your close friends and family. This is a gift you give out to people you just know well enough for a card.
It does have a message with it. It subtley indicates that the sender knows something about Linux and wants other people to as well.
If you want to make a living in Linux, think of it as a form of networking (the human kind, not the computer kind).
Re:Think Again (Score:2, Insightful)
^^^ thats just more proof to my case
The OpenCD (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Stuff it with games (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, lucky thing that's not what he's doing!
cardgames and kittens make the best OS (Score:3, Insightful)
That's how people judge an OS, you know.
They'll think it's cool. In fact, they'll think it's so cool they will show it to anyone who comes to visit them. And that's when we'll unexpectedly pull them in on superior security, stability, standards compliance and ofcourse the preemptible kernel...
OK, maybe not, but they'll still think it's a cool demo cd, ho ho.
Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Other considerations aside... (Score:2, Insightful)
What about free bibles or AOL cds (Score:5, Insightful)
Still, what if you received a bible, coran,scientology book or a Chick Track from a friend that is concerned for your soul. Perhaps even got an AOL CD from a friend that wants you to switch to a "better" service.
Send them something that they like, not something that you think might be good for them. Do not be an evangelist in christmass time. You might have less christmas cards to send next year.
Cheers,
Adolfo
Re:My vote: (Score:2, Insightful)
ChristBSD is far superior
Just curious...what's the mascot for this distro ;-)
Buddy Christ [yahoo.com] obviously. :)
[/OT]On topic, giving something new to someone is always nice, if they're generally interested in what you give them.
I would think carefully about prior conversations about computing - if there were any - and whether or not the recipient of the card has ever expressed any interest in other Operating Systems, or has been using windows or mac os and said,
`There must be something better than this.'
I think the general idea of giving a CD, or mini-CD, of data in a card is a nifty idea, although I'd be careful of giving it to people who might think you're being cheap if you don't follow up with a gift - sometimes just a card is more appreciated than a card and an unwanted gift.
You could give a short movie to people who're interested in things you've done, photos of your holidays to friends who're thinking about where to take their own holidays, and so on, tailoring the content to the recipient.
I'm not sure which distribution you should use, but if I was going to give Linux on a bootable CD to people - who possibly have no real idea what it is or what makes it different to any other software on their computer - then I would systematically download a copy of each latest version of the major CD bootable distributions - or those popular with geeks - burn them to CD, and boot up with each one.
I'd take careful note of each distribution's running performance, hardware detection, general "prettiness"*, and the last factor, how easy it is to install on a computer's hard drive - just in case someone really likes it.
I wouldn't worry about too much about whether Gnome or KDE, Mozilla or Firefox, Open Office or Kwrite as deciding factors because if your friends haven't heard of Linux, or have but don't know anything about it, then how are they going to have a preference for one desktop or program over another?
I'd worry instead about making it look as familiar as possible to their existing desktop, because nothing turns people off software more than having a basic affinity with one thing and then being forced to completely change how they do the same tasks, or perceiving they have to do something different.
That makes it "too hard", and people will generally give up when they think something is "too hard". If they were the sort of person who encountered things that were "too hard" and said, :)
`I can frigging do this!'
Then they'd probably be geeks.
* I'm presuming this is for non-geeks, where appearance is often just as important, if not more, than performance.
Re:There is a good point to be made from this (Score:3, Insightful)
You, sir, discredit the open source movement with your fanaticism by making such outlandish statements. Linux is good, but Windows has its advantages, and to not recognize them is to turn people away from your argument.
Gift giving rules (Score:4, Insightful)
I get the feeling that trying to switch someone to another OS somehow falls under the same etiquette.
Dan East
This is repugnant. (Score:3, Insightful)
Christ, what a bunch of cocks.
sickens me (Score:2, Insightful)
to go preaching around with it like that? It just sickens me. I mean I go absolutely ballistic with all these jesus-this-jesus-that religious f*ckers. Don't do the same under the linux label, please.
Not to mention, I still don't understand why do we have to assimilate every one of those barely-interested-in-computers to using linux? While admittedly windows still serves them better. My better half has accepted linux, but see it from her that she does it for no other reason than me. And I can only imagine what people like her would think after receiving a freaking live cd for xmas. What some of you guys fail to understand is that they just dont care. They should, but they wont. I mean, I know I should care about politics, but frankly I don't give a rats ass about that either. Getting a political pamphlet as a xmas card from some "friend" of mine would just tick me, nothing else.
A comment to the whole thread (Score:4, Insightful)
News for nerds indeed!
I like the idea. Why not try it out and give a report back later? This is what I think will happen: They will ask you the next time you visit what you gave them because it didn't work in their cd-player or computer. You sit down and show them and they will think it's a fun idea.
Then. The next time people in the news mentions Linux, they will say something like: "Yeah! I've tried Linux. I'm up-to-date in this computer-place-thingy-stuff. This intur-newt-thing."
It's fun. It's nerdy. I can't see why all you so called "nerds" are so negative. If it doesn't hurt anybody. Why is this such a bad idea?
Re:Stuff it with games (Score:2, Insightful)
"I guess my concern is that this guy is doing this more for himself than for the people he's giving these cards to, out of a misguided sense of altruism. I can almost guarantee that none of these people he's going to be giving these CD's to could care less about Linux - he obviously cares a lot more than they do, if he feels it necessary to jam these Linux CD's down their throats.
Take it easy! He's just giving away free cd's! He's not force-installing linux on anybody's machines! There's a whole lot of difference! They have the (easy) choice of ignoring the cd and throwing it away, something that *many* of us do with the *thousands* of free cd's we've received from ISP's and *several* vendors.
I mean they can download Linux the same way he can, but they haven't."
Sure they can, but in my experience they do not know they can. A live cd is very practical, because you can get to know linux, without the hassle of installing it and without the risk of losing any data! And if you don't want to try it, you can easily dispose of the cd and nobody has forced you to do or use anything.
You mis-understood his point (Score:3, Insightful)
Legos or video games are an example of a good gift. They didn't require any unwanted effort from you.
An example of a bad gift, on the other hand, would be if I gave you an XBox game if you don't even own an XBox. And then pestered you to play it. It requires more effort on your side than it required on mine. You get to spend some 150$ on an XBox, whereas I only paid some 50$ for the game. Plus the time spent going to the shop to buy one, etc.
E.g., since you mention a bike, giving a bike to an adult who doesn't already know how to ride one is a bad gift. It requires a lot more effort from them to learn to use it, than it took on your side to carry it out of the shop. And it's unwanted effort: if they wanted a bike, they would have already bought one.
And the bike makes for a good analogy with the Linux CD. It throws someone up a learning curve that they probably didn't want in the first place. To get any use out of it, they have to spend days learning new stuff. Days which they most likely didn't want to spend that way. Definitely not around christmas.
So basically, as was already said, unless you know for sure they're interested in Linux, I'd avoid that kind of a gift.
Re:Stuff it with games (Score:4, Insightful)
Yo, bad-asshat, step down off that high horse and think carefully about all that self-righteousness before idiot-casting it to all and sundry, eh?
Well, you know... there's the added value of not having to download the entire distro. And the added value of not having to find and burn a CD. And the added value of not having to take the time to research and worry about choosing the right linux installation to start playing with. Note that (flamebait!) all these are issues which have so far stopped me running my own Linux box, and I'm an IT-literate user on broadband who's actually quite curious about Linux. If you allow for the fact that most family & friends aren't, you get the added value of not having to learn how to download distros, not having to learn how to burn CDs, not having to go out and buy CD-Rs (you'd be amazed how many people own CD-R drives but no CD-Rs). As I said, I'm Linux-curious, but haven't had the time/energy to run my own box. If a mate handed me a pre-set-up CD that was guaranteed to work, no questions asked, I'd try it out tomorrow. No, tonight.
Christ almighty. He's sticking a free CD in a card, not anally violating them while pouring sugar in their gastank. Get some perspective, really.
Funnily enough, I find that approach more irritating, opinionated and unhelpful than simply burning me off a CD and going "here y' go... have a look if you're interested". You're basically instructing them as to how great Linux is, then instructing them to do all the learning and work themselves. He's doing all the work himself, and offering me the chance to try Linux risk-, effort- and pressure-free.
Ok, I'm going to explain something to you now. The reason people probably don't respond well to your approach? It's probably because you lecture them on the benefits of Linux, then leave them to go do all the hard work themselves. Family != nerds. Friends != geeks. Make it as easy as possible, and they'll do it. Lecture then abandon them, and don't be surprised if nobody takes a blind bit of notice.
Ok, this is just ludicrous. If he's doing it out of altruism (even "misguided"), he can't by definition be doing it "more for himself". Look up the definition of altrusim if you don't believe me:
Altruism: altruism (n.)
1. Unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness.
Ah. Oh. Ah. I apologise. I was under the impression we were talking about family, and friends. I didn't realise we were talking about died-in-the-wool linux geeks. I mean, my 90-year-old granny's a Debian admi
Stuff it with free software (Score:3, Insightful)
Audacity
BitTorrent - probably doesn't belong
Blender
FlightGear - along with our local scenery area
Gaim
Gimp
GnuGo - never seen any interest in this (duh)
GTK - for Gimp and Gaim, but it adds confusion
Inkscape - version 0.40 due any day now
Maxima
Mozilla - FireFox and Thunderbird
Mplayer
OpenOffice.org
Python - for the geeky kids
VideoLan
All this crap fits on one CD. I don't usually distribute it in quantity, but it comes in handy rather often. No one wants everything on it, but there is something for everyone. I also include an HTML file that lists descriptions of each program and links to the project web sites. Whenever someone tells me about the "free" copy of some commercial package they have, I just give them the CD and tell them which legally free package to load instead. In some cases, the free version offers something they don't have with the ripped-off one they've been using.
One guy at work actually wanted to stream video over his network at home. I gave him the CD and said "install VideoLan". After some setup issues, he has everything he wanted and is rather happy with it. It really goes over well when you fulfill an need people have.