Wowing the Crowd at the Printing shop with Debian

There have been a couple Microsoft commercials on TV lately that depict how simple it is for even little girls (like they're somehow limited so it means more coming from them, pfft) to perform certain tasks in Windows. I think one that I saw involved some image action. You know what? Computers should be that simple and just to show that Linux can be just as simple, I'll tell a story that happened to me yesterday.

Driving home from Dr. Mr. Chiropractor's office yesterday I saw a printing place up ahead of me and figured I could use some more business cards. So I pulled in, parked my car, and went into the shop. At the counter I asked a very pleasant woman which format she would prefer my design to be in so she could easily print it. She replied that jpeg would be fine. I said great, then I asked, "What about a png file?". Since she'd never heard of that, or so she claimed, I told her a little about it and was cut off by a shout form the back when someone said, "pdf would be best", and I turned to face him and said "Wicked. I'll be right with you." Dismissing myself from the company of the pleasant woman I told her I'd be right back.

I found a seat in view of the people with whom I was just speaking (on purpose) and set about accomplishing my goal of delivering to them a pdf of my business card design. Here's what I did:

I retrieved my laptop from its bag, placed it upon the table in front of me and opened the lid. Since I had it suspended it almost instantly showed me my desktop. Next up I opened wicd and connected to one of the networks around me. Then I fired-up a terminal and installed glabels. Now, to be totally honest I had already designed a card a while back and I only had to perform minor changes on it now. In a moment I finished my modifications and saved my design, then I printed it to a pdf file. Wicked. If you can print with it in Linux, you can print to pdf. How cool is that?

After I had the pdf file I whipped out a blank disc and burned the file to it. I ejected the disc, suspended my laptop and put it back in its bag, and brought the disc up to the counter to amazed looks. The man that said pdf files would be best approached the counter behind the pleasant woman and said "Holy sh*t! Did you just make a card, a pdf file and burn it to a disc that fast?"

I said, "yeah, well I did have to install a program - no biggie". And they were both dumbfounded. The pleasant woman asked me what program(s) I used and I replied, "Glabels, but it's the system that allows me to work so easily. I run Debian. It's got the tools, man, and that wicked functionality". I might be paraphrasing a bit but that's generally my words and attitude. Pleasant woman giggled a bit at my whimsical charm and the man from the back just smiled. He said, "That's so cool". I said, "yeah, it is cool." Then he asked me "You just found, downloaded and installed the program you needed, too?" I replied, "well, no. My system uses a central package management that provides me with a repository of 23,000 packages that I can install right from my desktop." More dumbfounded looks and "that's cool" replies followed.

Recognizing a moment when I see one, I plopped my laptop bag onto the counter and retrieved a Mandriva 2009 disc. I said, "Here, take this. It's not what I run, but it is the total package. Just boot your box to it and there ya go. Do you know how to change boot devices in your BIOS?" The man replied that he did. I said, "Rock on. I think you're gonna like that disc and don't worry about any mischief on your machine, this is a live disc and it runs without touching your hard drive." Well, they both just thought that was amazing. We exchanged more smiles and a few moments later my first proof was ready.

The moral of this story is that the public at large is completely ignorant of Linux and the schwing that you get with it. Of course, we already know this but every once in a while it's helpful to see it in action and to be there to provide answers or wow their socks off. It really did take me about 2 minutes to install glabels, get my design finalized, printed to pdf, burnt to a disc and in their hands. And it really did blow them away.

Wicked.

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