Throughout my life, I have found that relating ideas and concepts to people through analogies works much better than trying to explain details. A common example is showing how (in a simplistic sense) the flow of electricity in a circuit can be compared to water in pipes. Clearly, most analogies are limited and can be picked apart, but they often help get people on the right track.
One of the things that I have found hardest to explain is Linux. Assuming you can even get the concept of an operating system across, you still have to deal with explaining how it is different from Windows (if you’re lucky, the person will have had some exposure to OS X or another operating system but don’t count on it).
Randomly, I came up with the thought of comparing it to the difference between driving a car with a manual transmission and driving an automatic, the manual being Linux and the automatic being Windows. It’s a little harder to learn to drive a stick shift, but the benefit pays off in most cases. You have more control and power, better fuel economy (perhaps comparable to RAM use), and a stick shift is even cheaper. So, you could pay the extra for an automatic, hope that everything works out for you, and accept the limitations, or you can save some money but spend more time learning upfront for all the benefits.
Then the only challenge left is getting rid of the “that’s for computer geeks only” preconception. But manual transmissions aren’t just for racecar drivers….
Heh, this is actually a very good analogy.
Well, the classic “show and tell” also works well. For example when I was back in school I would sometimes inadvertently expose people to Linux when they asked me to use my laptop to check their email.
Usually the conversation went like this:
“Wow, why is like everything weird on your laptop”
“Oh, because I use Linux”
“Ah… Ok…”
At this point they were still doing fine. Most people were able to locate Firefox and get to their email under my Kubuntu setup without any problems.
Then of course sometimes I took a different route:
“Wow, why is like everything weird on your laptop”
“Oh, because I don’t use Windows”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Yeah, there is no windows on that computer”
This was when the person would slowly take their hands of the keyboard, eyes wide with panic with the “OMG I can’t possibly know how to use this thing! What if I break it” expression on their face.
I noticed that in many cases, if people don’t know it’s not Windows, they don’t even notice or care about the differences that much. You can watch them use it for like 20 minutes and they might be a little lost, or struggle finding the right apps but they often manage to get around the system quite well. Once you tell them what they did, they admit it was not much different.
When you do it the other way, and tell them they are using a different OS they immediately assume it is some bizarre cryptic system they can’t possibly be able to figure out and demand support.
Yeah, as long as people don’t realize they are out of their “comfort zone,” they seem to do just fine. It’s a sad situation but not surprising, considering the behavior of most people.