The Ubuntu Experiment

[Gilles Gravier]

Hi!

Dotan Cohen wrote:
> Now that everyone has heard about the Mojave Experiment (Microsoft
> showing off Vista as a new OS) why don't we organize an Ubuntu
> Experiment. We can show Ubuntu to people telling them it's a new
> computer OS, and when they fall in love with it we can give them a
> disk and say "not only that, but it's free!".
>
> What features would be good to demonstrate? Leave price out of it-
> that will come at the end.
>   
How much time do we have for a demo? This is more or less prioritized...

- Ease of installation (we need to show "as good as, or better than 
Vista", since in most cases, PCs' come with Vista, not Ubuntu)
- Live CD (Vista can't compete on that one)
- Sexy GUI (compiz - again "as good as, or better than Vista")
- Avant Windows Navigator (with bouncy icons a-la MacOS)
- OpenOffice.org (you get it directly as part of the OS... no 
incremental purchase necessary)
- Evolution (I hate it, but people want to see something familiar to 
Outlook / Outlook Express)
- Firefox/Thunderbird/Sunbird/Lightning suite (for those who have 
already made the open source choice even on Windows)
- Java web applications (yeah... we've got that too)
- Flash web applications (yeah... we've got that too)
- Skype (yeah... we've got that too)
- Acrobat Reader (yeah... we've got that too)
- Stellarium (cool OpenGL astronomy software)
- GIMP / F-Prot with a digital camera (one of the things that has kept 
Windows on my home PC for a long time)
- KDE Desktop Environment (with Ubuntu, you can actually completely 
choose your desktop environment)
- Updates Manager (with Ubuntu, you get free updates to everything, OS, 
security, applications, without cumbersome registration)
- If the person is a developer, show NetBeans (free, good, IDE) and GCC

- AND ALL THAT FOR FREE (yes, at the end)

Note that, since I work for Sun (hence the OpenOffice.org and Netbeans 
plugs) I tend to follow a similar script when demoing OpenSolaris ... :) 
(except for Avant Windows Navigator and Skype which I have not yet 
managed to get to run on OSol - KDE is in the works).

Gilles (also Gilles.Gravier at Sun.com)