Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1998 07:27:32 -0700 From: Don Wilde <dwilde1@ibm.net> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: dg@root.com, Mark Ovens <marko@uk.radan.com>, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: An idea for promoting FreeBSD Message-ID: <353DFE54.5BDF9477@ibm.net> References: <353BED45.7F185851@uk.radan.com> <199804210108.SAA21683@implode.root.com> <19980422165353.36930@papillon.lemis.com>
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Greg Lehey wrote: > > I suppose you're saying "yes, great idea". I agree. > > The thing is, this giveaway must work smoothly with no problems even > for the biggest idiot. This means that X is a must, even if it only > runs at 640x480. There would be a lot of work behind getting this > kind of mini-distribution working. IMO it would be worth it, but it > would be a catastrophe to send out a version with which the majority > of users had trouble. > It appears to me that if we think carefully about how much capability we give the users, and start with a less-smudged piece of paper, this would be workable. Remember, we're not worried about them being able to USE BSD, we're only concerned with showing them how powerful it is. For example, with the 640x480x8 X restriction, the only questions they have to answer are "where is your mouse?" and "what kind of muuse?" That's why I suggested a canned webserver+browser application set. It's easy, and it's completely contained within the RAM of the computer. No printers, no modems, no net routing, no sound, etc. If we stay away from their hard disk, it's trivial. However, we can do a lot with that! * the FreeBSD Handbook * xroot pictures * application and graphics demos * tutorials * ??? There are two things that will complicate the picture: 'net access and bootstrapping to their disk. I recommend that we stick to this restricted demo and flesh it out to the extent that it's really intriguing. As to the earlier comment by someone about Mozilla source, remember that here we're not distributing anything other than a fully functioning runtime. We want an advertisement that sells the product, not a working system. Once we hook somebody, they'll be eagerly awaiting the arrival of their Complete FreeBSD set with full working CDROMs! In the mean time, they'll be getting a headstart by surfing the manuals and the handbook. Note that I am not saying that this won't be a lot of work. Just replacing all the commands that write to the disk with NOPs is a major job! --> Don To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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