Marketing Competition

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Volsung
Posts: 160
Joined: Fri 28 Sep 2007, 02:39
Location: A house with broken Windows

Marketing Competition

#1 Post by Volsung »

My friends and I are in a marketing competition at a local university and we decided to try to market linux to teachers/students/school admin.

I was wondering if anybody here had ideas for software (doesn't have to exist, just ideas for programs, but if it does exist- all the better) and other features of puppy (or other linux distros) that might appeal to this group. Any ideas are welcome, esp. if you are a member of this group. If you are, tell how and why you use puppy.

Thanks!

raffy
Posts: 4798
Joined: Wed 25 May 2005, 12:20
Location: Manila

LMS and authoring

#2 Post by raffy »

Teachers will benefit from a built-in Learning Management System (LMS), like Moodle, but a faster (and simpler) LMS for low-end machines will be DokeOS. And they will want picture- and video-editing capability, too, so consider Gimpshop and Kino. Add voice recording and editing, too, say Audacity, or perhaps a podcaster software will be better.

For teachers to be able to eventually sell what they create, consider an add-on like eXelearning (see exelearning.org). There is an sfs here, so maybe just update it.

Students need only to interact with content, so basic browsing, file reading and multimedia playing will be OK, something that safepup already does, even in 128-MB RAM, old Pentium machines.

Some people believe that Office is needed in learning, but perhaps they just need to use presentation software. A slide-creation software should be a useful substitute. Inkscape may be good, but it is really not for quick drawings. Something like Xpaint or Tuxpaint (seriously) will be good. I've seen a paint program that's better than Xpaint, but forgot about locating it.

BTW, what Puppy version do you intend to use?

Best wishes to your project!
----------------------------------
Why and how teachers and I use Puppy Linux: http://ec-tech.org
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

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alienjeff
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Joined: Sat 08 Jul 2006, 20:19
Location: Winsted, CT - USA

#3 Post by alienjeff »

Stall new development, test intensively and patch bugs. Then, and ONLY then, market. Bullet-proof beats "kind of works most of the time on some HW" everyday. "As is" or other FOSSesque caveat emptor doth not make for intelligent marketing.
Last edited by alienjeff on Wed 14 Nov 2007, 23:17, edited 1 time in total.

Leachim
Posts: 229
Joined: Sun 27 May 2007, 23:04

#4 Post by Leachim »

I am a teacher and my students use a Puppy based Linux on their USB pen drives.

One big advantage is that it will run on all our PCs (we have lots of different types of PCs in our IT-laboratories) without installation! All software will be available without the need to install it. We're are indepent of malware (viruses, worms, trojan horses, etc.) that might have become installed on the PCs.

Students can even use their pen drives at home to exercise. Here Linux is a big advantage - we could not give away Windows based systems because our Microsoft licenses are valid for in-house use only.

One disadvantage: It seems to be absolutely impossible that not a least one student forgot his pen drive at home! ^^ (I always have one spare pen drive for such occasions ...)

raffy
Posts: 4798
Joined: Wed 25 May 2005, 12:20
Location: Manila

forgetful students

#5 Post by raffy »

net-booting can be used in a school setting. Search for "humongous initrd".

how to create*: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=18421
(2.13 works well, so for basic build, you can use safepup (using pup_213.sfs and zdrv_213.sfs)). You wil have to change to PAD=3500 in makeext2initrd.

how to deploy: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 995#116995

Cheers!
-------------------------
* There is a ready humongous initrd based on 2.16.1 in
ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

jonyo

Re: Marketing Competition

#6 Post by jonyo »

Speed

Takes a few minutes to set up an OS (live cd) wifi good to go.

Everything is saved from that point on.

Easy to back up.

Noob friendly..for a linux..

Nothing out there offers so much with so little megs

Excellent to start out with & then build on from there..

Options galore..

No hard drive required.

Recently ~ #10 - 11 in the distrowatch rankings.

http://distrowatch.com/index.php?dataspan=13

And the best part :) ..you can keep & run win on the same computer!:wink:

..if required..

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ttuuxxx
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Re: Marketing Competition

#7 Post by ttuuxxx »

Volsung wrote:My friends and I are in a marketing competition at a local university and we decided to try to market linux to teachers/students/school admin.

I was wondering if anybody here had ideas for software (doesn't have to exist, just ideas for programs, but if it does exist- all the better) and other features of puppy (or other linux distros) that might appeal to this group. Any ideas are welcome, esp. if you are a member of this group. If you are, tell how and why you use puppy.

Thanks!
"doesn't have to exist" Just tell them that adobe Photoshop and dreamweaver cs3 was just released for Linux, and actually Microsoft has ported Office 2007 to Linux just like the mac, Oh also tell them that Linux now has a skin over the file-manager so everything is easily understood and filed, and we now have C-drives but we call them z-drives, lol Have fun and yes i do tell "white lies" lol

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ttuuxxx
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even better

#8 Post by ttuuxxx »

One day i was bored in Tafe and i downloaded Microsoft "BOB" and I installed it in the start-up folder on all the windows xp school machines, lol. Nobody ever heard of Microsoft bob in the class before, and it was really funny, Just encase you don't know about it it, Microsoft bob was an entry to windows for kids, It was the single biggest flop in history for Microsoft, you can download it just about anywhere, like torrents, or Google search.

So just tell them that Microsoft has just released a new version of "Vista" for kids and show them "BOB" ,lol okay I'm done with the white lies,lol Have Fun

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Pizzasgood
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Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 20:28
Location: Knoxville, TN, USA

#9 Post by Pizzasgood »

I'm a student. The most important things for me are... XMMS, ALSA, Gimp, Abiword, Firefox/Opera, Xorg (to use two graphics cards and two monitors simultaneously), Gnumeric, Conky, Geany, RXVT, Bash, and gcc.

I occasionally use SciLab, but mainly because I have classes using MatLab. It's not a perfect replacement, but it works pretty well for just testing concepts. I'm not saying it's sub-par or anything, just that you can't write a program for SciLab and expect it to work right in Matlab when the TA's grade it. But it is similar enough that you can jump right in with few difficulties. And as much as I prefer C over Matlab, I have to admit that it's much easier to deal with the stuff we're doing in class (signal processing) using Matlab.


I do have and occasionally use OpenOffice, but not often. Abiword and Gnumeric are generally sufficient.

Another two programs that are very important to me are Dwarf Fortress and Wine (so I can play Dwarf Fortress without Windows). But it might not satisfy most people nowadays, who are more obsessed with fancy graphics than with digging into a mountain and creating a force to make dragons, flame demons, and even (dare I say it) elephants quiver in fear.


Also, there's an app out there that will order you pizza. I haven't used it myself (there's so much free and "free" pizza around campus that there's no point paying for one) but some people might find it handy.
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Lobster
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#10 Post by Lobster »

Image

Flexibility and ease of use are some of the Puppy characteristics.

It takes me between 2-6 hours to create a distro based on Puppy (and far longer to promote it)
Image

I think Pizza ordering (and a singing operating system) are essential
http://cslu.cse.ogi.edu/tts/

It must also be able to control robots and take over the world
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 556#136613

http://www.ubergeek.tv/article.php?pid=54

Now . . .

What was the question again?
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HairyWill
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#11 Post by HairyWill »

Will
contribute: [url=http://www.puppylinux.org]community website[/url], [url=http://tinyurl.com/6c3nm6]screenshots[/url], [url=http://tinyurl.com/6j2gbz]puplets[/url], [url=http://tinyurl.com/57gykn]wiki[/url], [url=http://tinyurl.com/5dgr83]rss[/url]

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