Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 15:19:58 +0000 (GMT) From: Jan Grant <Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk> To: johann@broadpark.no Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, bsd <bsd@nuug.no> Subject: Re: Presentation of UNIX to an ignorant crowd Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0202251513510.13403-100000@mail.ilrt.bris.ac.uk> In-Reply-To: <1014648629.3c7a4f35eab24@mail.broadpark.no>
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On Mon, 25 Feb 2002 johann@broadpark.no wrote: > Hi. > > I'm about to hold a lecture on UNIX to people who don't even have the faintest > idea of what it's all about. > > The utter perimeter of their knowledge halts at performing government-related > tasks in Windows 98. > > My job is to convince them that UNIX -- using Mandrake on workstations and > FreeBSD on servers -- is the way to go. In other words teach them the truth, > and make them convert. > > I was assigned to this job on a rather short notice, and therefore I havn't > really had time to do the thorough research part myself. > > I was wondering, however, if such a thing (general presentation of UNIX, its > movements up and till now and the various benefits it may serve). My knowledge > is filled with black holes that might twist out during this presentation, which > is why I was hoping that this could be of assistance. If you're certain that the required apps are there, don't tell: show. Eg: this is mandrake with kde and openoffice. These files it's using are being served by FreeBSD using (pick one: samba, etc). Include costs (TCO) if you can calculate them. A lot of what you want depends on what "government-related" work is; in particular, if they've got any bespoke apps you need to know that they'll work in your proposed environment. Otherwise you'll just generate resentment, excessive costs and an eventual rollback*. You may well have to answer questions like this: - can we still use Outlook/Exchange? - what do you expect to offer instead of those? - what will the training costs for a change be? - can we interoperate with other departments that still use Windows? If you don't have good answers for this then you might wish to bide your time and do something a little less dramatic: piecemeal successes win support; one spectacular failure will not be forgotten. jan * Which might be standard for governmental projects, depending on your country of choice - I make no comment :-) -- jan grant, ILRT, University of Bristol. http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/ Tel +44(0)117 9287088 Fax +44 (0)117 9287112 RFC822 jan.grant@bris.ac.uk Semantic rules, OK? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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