After being a Fedora user for a while, you may have come to enjoy it. And in fact you might want to encourage others to try Fedora. You don’t need any special privileges or to become a Fedora Ambassador to do that. As it turns out, anyone can help others get started with Fedora just by sharing information about it.
Having the conversation
For example, if you go out to lunch with a group of colleagues periodically, you might find it natural to talk about Fedora with them. If someone shows interest, you can suggest to get together with them for a Fedora show and tell. There isn’t any need for formal presentations or prepared talks. This is just having lunch and sharing information with people you know.
When you’re with friends, relatives, colleagues, or neighbors, conversation often turns to things computer related, and you can bring up Fedora. There are usually opportunities to point out how Fedora would partially if not completely address their concerns or provide something they want.
These are people you know so talking with them is easy and natural. You probably know the kind of things they use PCs for, so you know the features of Fedora that will be attractive to them. Such conversations can start anytime you see someone you know. You don’t need to steer conversations toward Fedora — that might be impolite, depending on the situation. But if they bring up computer related issues, you might find an opportunity to talk about Fedora.
Taking action
If a friend or colleague has an unused laptop, you could offer to show them how easy it is to load Fedora. You can also point out that there’s no charge and that the licenses are friendly to users. Sharing a USB key or a DVD is almost always helpful.
When you have someone setup to use Fedora, make sure they have the URLs for discussions, questions, and other related websites. Also, from time to time, let them know if you’ve seen an application they might find useful. (Hint: You might want to point them at a certain online magazine, too!)
The next time you’re with someone you know and they start talking about a computer related issue, tell them about Fedora and how it works for you. If they seem interested, give them some ideas on how Fedora could be helpful for them.
Open source may be big business nowadays, but it also remains a strong grassroots movement. You too can help grow open source through awareness and sharing!
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon from Unsplash.
zenbum
“The next time you’re with someone you know and they start talking about a computer related issue, tell them about Fedora and how it works for you.”
To me, this whole article seems uncomfortably close to how members of religious cults are instructed to spread their beliefs.
Paul W. Frields
@zenbum: Fair enough, evangelism isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But this is a significant way that open source distros get spread in the absence of advertising.
Mehdi
I remember making one of my classmates a Linux fan in 2008 by lending him a Red Hat Linux 6.0 (I think this was the version before it became RHEL) for a few days. We were sophomores at the time. Interestingly, he even did a Linux project one year later for graduation! Just a personal story. Hope it helps.
Mary Biggs
Quote: “…show them how easy it is to load Fedora…”
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You need to mention using Live images….no need for a “unused laptop”….they (or you) can boot a live image from a USB image. Since this runs completely from memory and the USB — and never touches the hard drive — the demo of Fedora is completely non-invasive on ANY laptop.
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My favourite is to use the XFCE spin — lightweight, clean interface. …great demo!!
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…..and, of course, it’s possible to load XFCE to the hard drive…or not….depending on the success of the demo.
errer
better way are translate documentation to Polish language
Qoyyuum
You have to understand that we don’t casually talk about OS, at least for me. Then it leaves me to support the family or friends that ended up working with the recommended operating system with what application they wanted on it.
Stefan
Any advice on how to explain the whole codec/rpmfusion situation?
This (having to search for which things to install to get video playback) is imo the single biggest blocker for recommending fedora (as opposed to distros that ship unfree things).
Klaatu
Excellent article! I’m a terrible “sales person”, but I wear tech shirts almost exclusively (mostly because I get them for $0 at conferences) and I use Linux exclusively. It’s very often just a matter of time until someone asks me to tell them more about Linux, which I’m happy to do.
Joe
For most people I’d talk to an LTS release seems to make more sense. On specific hardware, I have seen Fedora be strangely more stable – better driver support. For example the Elan trackpad, or the Intel NUC Celeron boot environment. However, if I’m not installing something for someone – I think it is overall hard. Usually a way to get very basic users keep using a refreshed computer a couple more years.
For users who would really value Linux – the container discussion is likely very appealing to web developers – run an isolated LAMP for maybe 200 MB of memory vs 1~2 GB on Windows Docker if they can even get it running on Windows. Freedom for unrestricted features/functionality (VMs, containers and endless updates) unfortunately is still a niche requirement.
So either helping breath life in old hardware (Fedora+XFCE – though Mint and Manjaro seem to have a more streamlined implementation of XFCE, or even Gnome if users can go without a desktop with icons), or power users.
Dmitry Suserov
after many years of happy fedora usage, I ended up pretty broke buying the cheapest laptop on amazon.
It has an AMD E2-9000e processor and so after initial update of fedora installation on reboot the graphics stops working.
For some reason canonical officially supports this laptop and now me myself stuck with ubuntu, while helping other people to switch to fedora. o_O