[Greennet-l] Going Open Source - Linux Training this month at GreenNet

[Anna Feldman]

Dear GreenNet Members,

Following last month's successful Linux training, and the enormous 
demand for more, we're repeating the workshop on Friday May 26th.

So, no! You haven't missed your chance if you were busy last month.

And yes! You can come to the next training session if you book soon. 
It's still only £50 per person for the whole day. You can choose to work 
on one of GreenNet's training PCs, or bring your own computer and 
install Linux on it during the training. Scroll to the bottom of this 
message for details of how to book your place. (And yes, we will run 
another training in June, if May is no good for you.)

But what about all those excuses...
"Don't I need to be a  geek to run Linux?"
"My friend's brother told me that open source is rubbish because it's 
all developed by amateurs"
"But how will I be able to read the Microsoft Word documents that all my 
colleagues are sending to me?"
"I've got half my life on a Windows PC! If I install Linux won't I lose 
that?"
"What's so bad about proprietary software anyway? It's fair enough that 
software developers want to make money from their work!"

Well...
* No you don't need to be a geek to run Linux (some of us are perfectly 
normal - but we appreciate geeks a lot more since discovering the beauty 
of Linux desktop applications)

* Open Source software developers tend to be a lot more like all of us - 
people who want to share and build on each other's ideas. They think 
that if other people think of improvements or find bugs in their 
software, they should be able to get into the code and sort it out. 
That's why Open Source software gets better so fast.

* Open Office is an office productivity suite, that does pretty much 
what Microsoft Office does (including reading MS docs and saving in MS 
doc format). Because the code is open, localised versions have been 
created in dozens of languages that MS doesn't think it's profitable to 
work in. For millions of Swahili speakers in East Africa, this has
finally allowed meaningful access to software that we have been taking 
for granted for years.

* The way we tend to install Linux on desktop PCs these days, is by 
partitioning the hard-drive. This is a perfectly painless procedure, 
which allows you to keep Windows running in tact in one part of the 
drive and have Linux running in the other. When you switch on your PC, 
you simply choose which section you want to boot up in.


* And yes.. we also think it's fair enough for techies to make a living 
from their work on software development. (That's what you pay us for 
when we build dynamic websites for you, and develop brilliant anti-spam 
tools). But we think it's less fair to make gazillions of dollars profit 
out of licenses which you get locked into renewing, for software whose 
code is locked away from the people who should be able to localise and 
fix it.


So you see, at GreenNet we're now so convinced that Linux is worth the 
effort, that we'd like to invite you to come in and learn how 
functional, secure and fun working on a Linux desktop is. At the 
incredibly subsidised rate of £50 per person we're offering a full day's 
Linux training that will cover...

- Open source software issues, values, philosophy
- Installation: partitioning your hard drive and installing Linux
- Software Management: getting things working your way on Linux
- Resources and Tools: everyday work on the sunny side of your hard disk

We'll also be on hand after the training to offer support in keeping 
things up and running.

This training will take place on Wednesday 26th May from 9.30 to 5.30 at 
the GreenNet office in Old Street, London.
Please call Ian on 020 7065 0935 or write to opensource at gn.apc.org to 
book your place and get more details.
And if you can't make the date in May, get in touch anyway and we'll 
book you a place on the next round.

All best wishes

Anna Feldman
On behalf of the GreenNet Collective