Yo,

Just wanted to share something with you all. It's kinda cool

--------------------

I really enjoyed the fact that the other day I went into CompUSA to buy Redhat 9, there were other people in the same isle as me and they were looking at linux. In fact, one guy picked up the box just as I did and went to the register and was in line in front of me.

The dude was about 55 years old, and looked just like an average joe.

Soon more and more people will be doing this

Later...

That's cool. I live in a really small town so there are no chains here except for staples, and they have nothing linux. In fact, a while ago I was trying to buy a new vid card at a local comp. store, and I asked for a 64MB card, the guy said "no, we don't have anything smaller than 128, besides a 64 isn't good enough anymore", so I told the guy that I use linux and a 64 is plenty good enough because my computer doesn't suffer from extreme bloat, then he got upset and kicked me out of the store.

What a loser....some people are outright hostile towards linux.

Another example, I got a friend of mine to try linux, so I set up his box to dual boot with windows. Of course windows was crashing all the time, and this other mutual friend was convinced that windows was crashing because I installed linux. "linux is taking up too much space" he says. ha ha ha. bozo....

Hm. I guess that in the UK my hometown doesn't qualify as 'small town', but otoh there is a staples here, would have expected it to have similar stock to other UK staples - and last time I checked they had Mandrake 9.0 (desktop and PowerPack) and also various Redhat issues on sale. Plus SuSE 8.1 personal and professional issues.

But duhh, I guess this might be an accident. They still had a copy of OS/2 Warp on sale until January!




Give him a Knoppix CD and make him try that. Even the most dyed in the wool win user can't tell you that an OS that writes *nothing* to her/his hdd has damaged his/her windoze install.

jd

lol can you say bitter ends?
of coarse we know that it's only money microsoft reigns for, not really os ...

Why were you suprised?
His age?
Or his average looks?
And again why were you suprised?
What is a 1337 linux haX0r dude supposed to look like? Not average?

yeh, I look like an average joe. No pocket protector, no network cables in my back pocket.

No one knows i'm a computer geek...

A year and change back I was talking to my good friend Jack on the phone after not having heard from him in a long long while. I told him about my enrollment in the Penguinistas as it were and he cackled and said:

"I can do you one better, on October 25th at midnight, I went to CompUSA and picked up RedHat 7.2!"

"Huh?"

"That was the Windows XP midnight sale release night."


Cheers,

Finegan

heh. same here.

STEALTH NERD

I try to wear my nerdness on my sleeve but it never works for me at all. I'm a girl and I use linux, that throws most people off, I always get the feeling that most people who see my computer (I was going to use the word box there but then I thought "meh... maybe not") expect to boot up into windows ME, when they see linux boot up they get a, what I can only explain as, daisy eye look to them, but whatever.

Anyways, my best experience with this was at futureshop about a year ago. I went to pick up the latest Mandrake release (think it was 7.2 or something, maybe 8), future shop has, for some reason, their linux box sets (at the time they only carried mandrake) in a locked glass case, as a side note they were placed directly opposite to a huge XP display. So I had to ask a sales guy to get me a copy, he looked me up and said "umm, you sure you don't want anything easier?" I lauged, told him to get his minimum wage earning (I'm just being a b**ch, I made minimum wage for a long time) butt to the linux box and get me my mandy.

The point to all this (yeah beleive it or not there is one) is that Linux users come in all different shapes and forms and yes, even sex's.

Anna.

You think Linux is only for young cool people ?
I'm cool but 52, do you mind ?

Bruno

mmmm...box

Oh, the Irony. CompUSA must have been thrilled at this sale.

34 y/o, 5'11, 235lbs. Certified welder / Journeyman Carman. I repair frieght cars for a small railroad and I am in the process of building my own little home network and a chopper. I have been using Slackware for almost a year now.
Yep, I'm just a pocket protector away from being a total geek.

I was simply meaning exactly that:

Everyone is buying linux, even "average joe".

I was not meaning that people that are over age 30 are not allowed, or that everyone that uses linux looks like a geek.



Heck, I don't look like a linux user at all

I guess I only do when I'm wearing my Redhat baseball cap.

Peace all...

Y'all shoulda seen the look on the Maplins guy's face when I told him I needed a stereo cable to fix a problem with sound on Linux (no audio cable from CD player to sound card).

I'm female, and very middle aged (47); he'd never, ever come across a born-again win refugee like me before.

Kudos to him tho' - he helped me out, unlike the patronising and unhelpful bloke @ PC World grrrr!

jd