Follow up on things the Linux folks don’t get
ZDNet Blogger learned quickly that it is really easy to tick off the linux community, especially if you point out the flaws of the Linux community. Now before anyone goes nuts on that statement, stop for a moment, take a collective deep breath and realize that no one is infallible.
The response to the Five crucial things the Linux community doesn’t understand about the average computer user post I made the other day was, well overwhelming. With some of you I think that the post rung a bell, while with others it must have touched a nerve. I’m pretty sure that getting over 750 TalkBack comments in a couple of days is some kind of record here at ZDNet and just in case there’s an award, I’m already writing my speech!
Source: ZDNet Blogs
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes wrote an article about the things that the Linux community does no get here, and the output from that caused quite the controversy in the Linux community. Linux people have always been highly vocal about a great many things, and pining on the community is guaranteed to get readership that wants to have their say as well.
There are some things that the Linux community does not get, there are somethings that they do, and like with anything, it is with the passion of the people involved that works out how well something works. Everyone admires the person in their basement who writes 300+ drivers for Linux, you will not see that kind of passion in a company unless there is something else at stake.
Adrian though does bring up good points, Linux is not the only one out there, there is Mac that is based on Unix, and a plethora of versions for Linux that can be a bit daunting. We use Suse Linux because it was easy to understand, and when dealing with things, sometimes easy to understand is a good thing. Apple is a viable alternative to Windows, and Linux, because it is also easy to understand. This is an important thing to note, not everyone is a computer geek. And not everyone cares how elegant something is, they just want the thing to work out of the box.
OpenOffice is a good thing, it works and does what it needs to do out of the box. We are using OpenOffice to write this because it is easy, and does everything we need it to do.
Customer support, I can call Novell up, but I have no clue to call for Knoppix.
Relax, relaxation is always good, and some of the bits and pieces in Linux make things easier, somethings make it harder. But overall, Linux is a decent operating system that needs to be adopted, and should be used more. However, it is the investment into anything that business needs to think about, and if they have a pile of support on one side, and confusion on the other, it makes a harder sell. People purchase the software as much as they purchase the customer support.
Yes, Linux is a very cool software, and its people are vocal in its defense. But as always, no one thing is ever 100% perfect.
This is just my take on things, but I think that the reason you got such a response from the community was not that you were criticizing the OS, or even the community, but that you assumed that as a community we didn’t realize those problems and that somehow we are so oblivious, and you so insightful, that there was no work being done to solve these issues because you alone realized that they exist. A great example is Xorg, the community and X.org developers know that the xorg.conf is a greatly despised thing, and I, like them, will willingly admit that something needs to be done about it. And because of that things *are* being done. The Xorg devs have said that their next version will basically do away with the xorg.conf entirely and will allow new monitors to be detected and used without restarting the xserver.
I hope that you actually talk to some of the developers of free software, especially those working to make Linux more ready for the average user, I think that if you do, you will be surprised to find that people like Mark Shuttleworth already recognize and are working on improving all of the areas which you criticized, and more! There are some people who really do take offense at anyone pointing out flaws in FLOSS, but that is just a vocal minority ( usually new to Linux themselves ).
I found your article to be ignorant of the true state of understanding by FLOSS developers and sounding like every post by a 15 year old criticizing the Linux community, not what I would expect from a journalist. That’s just my $0.02
You do realize that I did not write the original article, and nothing spells out the need to relax more than your comment. While it is interesting, no one is assuming anything, no one is saying anything that people don’t know. More amusing than not. I do respect your opinion, but take a look at your own words, and the article again, remember nothing is 100% perfect, and more people need to relax.
Jordan probably aims that last statement at the author of the post. The geeks for geeks idiot or whoever. I read that original article and I was one of the first to reply. I completely agree with with Jordans statements above.
I just cannot see what your point is. It’s like me, writing a blog called “Windows gets Viruses” and that Windows users are stupid because they have no idea what security is. That was offensive and I’m not adding anything relevent or insightful that nobody else knows. i’m just offending people. Can you not see thats what your doing with your blogs towards Linux?
Phill
Phil,
Keep on offending,
My thoughts on writing the article that I wrote is that nothing is perfect, if we come from the assumption that one thing is better than another then we need to prove our point, not try to silence our critics by presenting emotional arguments that are hard to tie together into something cogent. But this has given me a great idea for two more articles, what is wrong with windows, and what is wrong with linux from a business viewpoint. Might take a while to write though, they will have to be heavily referenced.
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