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

[Sean DALY]

Thanks for this Douglas

I believe virtualbox was chosen since free (beer) and multiplatform.

Sebastian, what do you think about these ideas?

thanks

Sean



On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 3:07 AM, Douglas McClendon
<dmc.sugar at filteredperception.org> wrote:
> 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
>
>
>