Last night I was enjoying Florida’s warm night chatting with some non-techie friends, and we ended up talking about computers and OSs (Windows, MacOS, and Linux).
During our conversation, I was surprised to find out that most of these people used PCs (with Windows), because they “didn’t” have a choice. But, what do they mean by that?? Well, the thing is that they were complaining about the amount of viruses found in Windows, and how many times they had to pay someone to reinstall it because of their viruses problems. However, they said it was their only choice because they felt like buying a Mac was too expensive by the time they bought their PCs.
But, why was a Mac the choice they couldn’t afford?? Well, this surprised me even more simply because they know that Macs are UNIX based (even though they don’t know what this means), and that Mac’s do not have viruses (and we all know why). Anyway, the thing is that these people were starting to look into Macs simply because of the fact they’ve been told (by their friends), that Macs do not have all those nasty viruses that Windows does, and that they were not going to have any problems with them. So basically, lots of people are changing to Macs just simply because they now know that it does not have viruses.
But, enough about Macs. This is where Ubuntu (and Linux) came in. I told them… “why would you spend so much money to buy a Mac if you can just simply install Linux in your PC… and you wont have viruses…”. After saying this, they were a little bit confused so I just started explaining them what Linux is, what Open Source is, and most important of all, what Ubuntu is. After all my explanation they simply wondered “Are you telling me that with Ubuntu I won’t have viruses, and I won’t have to buy a new computer, and best of all, I won’t have to pay for it and I will have lots of applications for free??”… “Where can I try this… and where can I get this…” and well, I just told them… “you can download it for free, you can request free CDs, or even better, I can show it to you, and install it for you so that you can give it a try!!”…
Anyway, my conclusion here is that people is starting to realize that there are other alternatives than just sticking with one operating system, and that the best thing of all is that they won’t have viruses. However, they are really not aware that Linux exists. This clearly shows that there’s a huge market were Linux, and specially Ubuntu, can kick in, because… they are paying companies for virus free solutions, such as Mac, while they are not aware that this is not their only solution.. From my point of view… most of these people only uses their computers to edit documents, listen to music, and browsing the Internet… and this is something that they could do with Ubuntu… without a problem! So, let’s start Ubuntizing people!!
