[SoaS] installation fear, was Re: [Marketing] Governance & Trademark in the Wiki

[Douglas McClendon]

Sean DALY wrote:

> You've mentioned how the website could be improved - the "fine print".
> When you look at the Sugar on a Stick page, what do you think it could
> express better to guide inexperienced users? The single biggest
> barrier we face is installation fear - this is how Windows keeps its
> marketshare (with help from proprietary file formats), and why
> GNU/Linux desktops have so much difficulty breaking out. Sugar on a
> Stick sidesteps the problem by not touching the hard disk, but does
> indeed require system-specific BIOS fiddling.

In response to this, and DancesWithCars autorun html point, I can see 
possible progress in this direction-

a) autorun html.  Simple to add technically.  I'd opt for pure open 
source but possibly less compatable simple autorun technique, as opposed 
to using the various less-free and often closed source autorun helpers.

b) the content of the html to be autoran- obviously the sky is the 
limit, and something marketing is particularly suited for.  To the 
extent that technical information should be contained, there is the 
LiveDistro wikipedia page, which would be included, as well as a layer 
above it translated/shrunk into a quickstart version targeted at average 
parents/teachers.

c) other low hanging fruit windows FOSS.  Firefox seems worth it if 
you've got the space.  But more importantly qemu, or whatever the best 
open source windows virtualization solution is (qemu/virtualbox/?). 
I.e. the webpage should include simple instructions for launching that 
virtualizaiton targeted at the CD/USB that contains it.

Now, these are all old ideas I brought up with Fedora years ago, but 
they just aren't that interested, perhaps due to demographics.  I.e. 
sugarlabs demographics would seem to benefit more from these things IMO.

The reason in my own fedora derivative I haven't spent much time on (C) 
for instance, is because I personally just really don't care that much 
about windows.  One thing that scares me is how fragile qemu for win32 
sounded.  It looks like virtualbox is gpl and available for win32 but I 
haven't tried it.  As such, I think it would be a good idea to do (C), 
but not really advertise it as anything but experimental for at least a 
year.

Also, since pygtk appears available for windows ala liveusb-creator, 
perhaps the best in the long term would be an autorun program that is 
just a simple pygtk app that can either launch information via a 
portable firefox install pointed at the html on the stick/cd, or launch 
the cd/stick virtually under qemu/virtualbox.  Or enter a chat session 
with sugarlabs techsupport.  Or launch liveusb-creator (in a mode that 
pulls the data from the stick if that isn't yet supported.  I.e. stick 
replication)

Anyway, thats where I see the lowest hanging fruit for the longterm 
solution to the problem end-users grokking the whole experience upon 
first introduction to the product.

$0.02...

-dmc