Journal stoolpigeon's Journal: Pi case, selling linux 2
I got involved a bit in the Why Linux Can't Sell on the Desktop discussion. It was fun. It made me think about how far Linux (specifically Fedora in my case) has come over the years. A number of people brought up printers as a Linux problem. I don't doubt that they've had trouble, but for me all my printer troubles the last 2 years or so have been on Windows. My Linux machines (at home and work) have just worked. My Windows stuff on the other hand has been a real hassle. I enjoyed the discussion. There's still some software that Linux doesn't have but I know I don't miss much any more. Games of course come up but I haven't played many games on PC in long time. I still play StarCraft every so often. But the only other PC games I play much are on Linux - Wesnoth mostly. But more of the games I play are on my consoles or my phone. Anyway - to sum it up - I'm glad to have choices but if I had to pick just one platform, I could get it done on Linux.
Oh - speaking of choices. I thought that this TED talk on choice was pretty interesting. I've been thinking about this idea a lot since I've moved. When I go to the store here in Hungary, there are situations where I have less choices than I did in the US (soda, spaghetti sauce, etc.) and times when I have more (beer, hard meats, bread). In fact when I bought clippers to cut my hair in the US I ended up buying them at a pet store. I'd go to target or walmart and have a couple choices. Here - I went to get clippers (didn't bring my US ones, wrong voltage) at Tesco and there was like half an aisle of them - 20 kinds or more. I locked up. The clippers I bought work well and I can charge them via usb.
The second story that caught my eye was the one about the raspberry pi case. I checked it out because I plan on picking up one of those little suckers as soon as I can. I've been thinking about what I'd do for a case. The one from tfa doesn't interest me that much. I have no idea how the USB thing will work. But it did get my brain thinking and someone mentioned they'd be making a case out of legos. What an awesome idea. I figure that's something I'll definitely try. Then I started thinking it might be fun to make themed cases and sell them. If this thing continues to sell well - even after this initial rush - I think something like that might generate some revenue. Maybe not lots but it would be fun I think.
And before I go - this TED talk on the paradox of choice is also really interesting. It relates more directly to my story about being paralyzed in the store - though the first video I linked is pretty awesome.
since CUPS (Score:2)
Setting up printers on Linux has been an absolute breeze. I'm no Apple fanboy, but I do have to tip my cap to them for the work they did on that and contributing it to the open source community.
Setting up printers on Windows remains a dreary, error-prone process.