RE: Some thoughts on the future of gnome

["Michael Schulz" <mschulz creative-chaos com>]

The problem I see with this is that people don't buy GNOME. They 
buy or install SUSE or RedHat or Mandriva or Ubuntu. So not only
does one have to make sure that the desktop environment delivers 
but also the OS. Are the applications available that people care
about and who can they call for help? If their Internet connection
doesn't work they can call their neighbour or friend to fix the
Internet. If now they tell them they run Linux it needs to be as
easy as with Windows. There was a Linux Mentor program mentioned
sometime on some list (can't remember). This probably would help.

Creating such a network takes some time and effort and could be 
a way to give back to the community for people who can't contribute
code but are good at teaching other people.

Michael

> -----Original Message-----
> From: marketing-list-bounces gnome org 
> [mailto:marketing-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of alan
> Sent: Dienstag, 11. Oktober 2005 15:45
> To: marketing-list gnome org
> Subject: Some thoughts on the future of gnome
> 
> Hi all!
> 
> This is my first post to the ml so please go easy on me :) (I 
> hope its the right list, I sent to a couple of other ones but 
> this seems to be the best bet!)
> 
> I was just thinking about gnome and how to make it more 
> widespread and I realised that the windows vista release is 
> an ideal opportunity for gnome to get noticed by the wider public.
> 
> First of all, is it likely that a windows version of gnome 
> (even a basic, light version) will be available when vista is 
> released? The way I see it is this, people will look at the 
> vista advertising and see all these cool features that it 
> supposedly offers them but they will also notice the price 
> and the fact that their old 2GHz system just doesn't cut it 
> so they have to upgrade that too! What better time to have a 
> huge publicity drive which shows people "Look! we can give 
> you all this, AND all this other cool stuff, on your existing 
> windows computer without the need for expensive hardware 
> upgrades! And guess what? It's FREE!! (As in Freedom and as 
> in beer)" I'm not talking about this in a "how can we beat 
> windows" kind of way, more of a "what opportunities exist for 
> popularising of gnome" and if you ask me, the vista launch is 
> an _excellent_ window of opportunity 
> 
> All the publicity wont matter if gnome isn't able to do "all this"
> though so perhaps we should have a bit of a recruitment drive 
> right now and find people with the time to tackle some of the 
> bigger tasks (porting, new applications etc). 
> 
> I know most of this is already covered in the road-map etc 
> but I just want to tell people what I would like to see 
> happen! I'm learning mono c# at the moment so I may even be 
> able to help in a few months.
> 
> variant
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