How many have you brought to the dark (light) side?

[samwichse]

I was just thinking about my Linux zealotry (maybe not zealotry, as I'm not going to say Linux is 100% better for everything or anything) and how many people around me I've switched over to it.

My father (built up a computer from old parts, installed RedHat 9)

My mother/stepfather (same as above)

My grandmother (old emachines, installed RH 7.2)

A friend of a friend (custom build on the cheap with mostly used parts, running Fedora Core 1)

Another friend of a friend (Frankencomputer, running RedHat 9)

Mead (I can't actually take credit for him, but we've shared the learning experience)

A good friend of mine is also chomping at the bit to replace the OS on her constantly crashing Dell (Windows 98) with Linux. The appeal to her appears to be:
->Stability
->Price (free)
->Features (smooth multiple desktops in KDE and gaim especially)

It's interesting to note that I provide support for all of these machines, and after a few initial calls (How do I put files on a floppy? Where is internet explorer? Where is MS Word?), they tend to trickle off, and I've not had to do any real work on any of them except my dad's, as his has a via KX133 (early Slot A Athlon chipset) and the sound keeps doing wonky things.

It's odd that the most computer illiterate have no trouble at all with a good Linux box on their desktop.

Sam

[John Prophet]

"a via KX133 (early Slot A Athlon chipset) and the sound keeps doing wonky things."

I had the same problems on my tekram slot a kx133 board. Somewhere along the line a driver must have fixed it cuz it stopped....but it would start making this terrible "digital" noise..screeching, popping etc..once it started doing that you may as well try to restart really quik cuz it was on the way to locking up. I never figured it out but I thought it had to do with the modem...(maybe ac97 driver issue?)

[Redwolf]

The via sound thing may be the well documented conflict between certain VIA chipsets and some Creative boards. Might wanna check it out.

[Xeroid]

Well, jkrohn corrupted me and I have in turn corrupted about 6 other people.

[Praetorian]

pbharris and SpookyEddy corrupted me, and now I've run off and started a free Unix user group in my town. Gosh knows how many people I've doomed for life...

[washe]

myself..... but im developing a mad plan to corrupt other souls....

[haxxorpoop]

LoLz @ washe

[pbharris]

1. my wife
2. my kids (well- they dual boot...)
3. my mom, who was never on the dark side. all she will ever know (i hope) is linux.

[nukes]

I've made people try it. Some of them took to it well, others went mental.
1) I formatted my bro's PC, and installed Mandrake over Win98, he made me put windows back on.
2) I rebuilt the fileserver, replacing windows with Debian. Everyone seems pleased with it as we don't need a keyboard/mouse/monitor attached and it never crashes (I mean, not once) whereas with windows, it would freeze 2/3 times each day.
Nobody up here seems interested. They all think I'm mad (which I am - just not for that reason)

[Germ]

3 definite converts and I was working on a 4th.

nukes...you? mad?? never!!!