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Human
Administrator
Location: Chicago
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Why Linux is not for You, Part 3
Remember that different does not mean the same as difficult. There was a time when my now 50+ year old aunt memorized DOS commands because she needed to in order to complete her job. Today she calls me when her "e-mail appears to freeze," because she was unaware that downloading an e-mail with a 9MB attachment on her 56K dialup would take that long, and during that time the progress bar for "retrieving e-mail" would not move. Did she know enough to telnet into her pop3 server, give it the necessary commands and figure out the size of the e-mail with attachments? Furthermore, did she know how to delete that e-mail using telnet, had she decided she didn't really needed it and would only be a waste of time? I don't think she knew any of this, that doesn't mean what I did was difficult, she just didn't know how to do it, the same way my mother who 2 years ago didn't know how to use a computer didn't know how to download Yahoo Messenger on Windows. She didn't even know how to get to the blunt of her applications (by "get to" I mean click the start menu and go to programs). Conclusion: Anything you've never seen before is difficult, no matter how intuitive or how many failsafes have been protected by sticking logical messages to the user inside the code. Just because we know that Linux has a different method of doing things, doesn't mean it has a difficult one.
Point number Four: You should not use Linux if you're trying to destroy Microsoft. Let me say that again for all of you analysts, technical writers, Linux "companies", and supporters of this so called revolution.
Linux is not here to destroy Microsoft. It's simply not. Remember what the number one Linux developer of all time said: "... just a hobby, won't be anything big and professional ..." If you ask me, the goal of Linux is not made by RedHat, SuSE, IBM, or even Linus himself. The goal of Linux is made up in the mind of the user you're talking to, and their goal may be very different from yours. I've seen so many people say that the goal of Linux is now to take on the desktop, mainly Linux desktop developers and hardcore Linux desktop users. If you're going to try and speak for an Operating System you should probably try to at least understand that the goals you're talking about are not that piece of software's, nor are they everyone who uses that piece of software, but they are yours, and quite possibly yours alone. Granted that if a distribution is going to "take down Redmond," it will most likely have to mimic Redmond enough that users can migrate to it without noticing any difference, but who's to say that's what Linux users want. I'd love to see the day when I can walk in and buy Linux on a computer at Best Buy or CompUSA, but I'd never actually buy one. I'd never buy one because I know the Linux I'm getting on that system is probably so much like Windows that it's not even recognizable as Linux. So why do we have this outstanding number of people in the Linux community saying Linux is going to destroy Microsoft and that the number one goal of Linux now must be the desktop? We don't. Most of the people who write this jibber-jabber are Microsoft users who feel the goal of Linux SHOULD be to replace Microsoft. Another large majority are people who support or work in companies which produce software and Linux distributions that are trying to replace Microsoft. Lastly, the ones that don't fall into the first few categories are the ones like me. We say Linux is going to destroy Microsoft cause it is. Not because we want it to, not even cause we really care if it does. Sure I wouldn't mind seeing people using Open Source Software and having products that are backed as much by the people who make them as the people who sell them, but hands down it's not my number one goal. If it sounds selfish to say that I could really care less if Joe Blow is able to, or wants to run Linux, then so be it. The fact is, I really only care if I'm able to do everything I want on Linux, and the fact is, I can.
Being ABLE to do stuff on Linux doesn't necessarily mean to me that there's a software application to do it, or that it's already been done on my system. Being ABLE to do stuff on Linux is exactly what it says, being able to. At the moment, I could modify my kernel source code to support hardware I want it to support, I could rewrite the memory manager, I could add my own system calls. I could do lots of stuff and to be perfectly modest about it I can really do ANYTHING on Linux. In my opinion, this is what Linux is all about. I know there are many other Operating Systems out there that are open source and community driven, but there's something about Linux as a piece of software and as a community that just holds me to it. And honestly, I don't see anything wrong with my Operating System of choice being referred to as a "religion" as it sometimes is. I don't care if your Operating System is technically better, if it has better games, more carefree installs and upgrades... I don't care if your OS makes it quicker for you to do what you want to do. What I do care about is that Linux is the right OS for me and the OS that best fits my needs. If my needs change and the OS fails to adapt, I'll either adapt it myself, or change the OS I use, but until then Linux is far from what's right for everyone, and I could care less, because it's what's right for me.
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Le temps détruit tout
"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling
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