Group 1: "All these instructions on the internet say I need a computer or sometimes even two; who has that kind of money?"
Group 2: "I have sixteen fully operational laptop computers that I fished out of a dumpster that desperately need a good home, but no one will take them, so they're cluttering up my apartment."
It feels like some problems would be solved if these two groups could talk to each other, but somehow it never seems to work that way : (
I think you're almost right. The thing is that most of the time when I see a Group 1 style post, the instructions are from a website about how to set up some kind of open source product that actually works perfectly fine on the computers that Group 2 can provide.
Very few tasks actually *need* a high end PC. Some operating systems do, however, and people expect a "computer" to be able to run a "modern" operating system.
Combine that with the various social and technical barriers to getting started with Linux, both from inside and outside the open source community, and here we are.
dynamic
Templaillo AhÃ