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On Friday 10 December 2004 09:33, zen14920@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
The support HAS to be there
Yes. The task is not selling a few boxes, it is establishing a support infrastructure from elements that already exist, with a pyramidal support network from a neighbour in the office/home who knows about normal use and some abnormalities through a routine supporter for hardware and for software, and on to a second/third line support system and if necessary all the way up to the authors of an application and the operating system or someone who can patch one or the other who is not one of the authors. GNU/Linux and other FLOSS have an advantage at the tip of that pyramid, and for the sophisticated users such as commonly are found here probably at the middle of the pyramid as well. The layer of the ziggurat to be consolidated is the base though. The time is here, and that is the task rather than worrying about exact problems.
however if a user wants a computer for office type work then Linux should not be a problem
That's underselling it. Actually, from the standpoint of actual use for actual office stuff in a supported environment Linux is already better than Windows, and Windows is clearly a problem in office use. A problem that is controlled, but carries a cost both for control and for fixing problems when they get through. That recognition by Microsoft is why they have moved from arguments on quality of a couple of years ago to arguments about _total_ cost of ownership. And seems to be why they have pressed on with introducing systems that allow a small test on a few computers to progress to knocking over 80 000 desktops in the Department of Work and Pensions - an effort to reduce TCO still further by allowing administrators to manage more machines from one place. My belief is that SOHO is a good place to target, both in order to earn a modest income and in order to provide a valued service. Home also, provided the aim is clear, to provide people with a limited use machine for their normal uses, of mail, web browsing and word-processing with maybe a bit of adding up in a spreadsheet. And printing it. But a rota or consortium of maintainers and a help desk are required. Now, the economics of call centres are well-worked out. Is thre a frnachised one that would handle this? They need not be in the same country although it would help. -- Dr Adrian Midgley GP Exeter www.defoam.net Open Source is a necessary but not of itself sufficient condition. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.