Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - ATTENTION: "Why Linux is Not for You: The Lengthy Rebuttal of a Linux User"

SecretMethod70 · 05-01-2003, 03:30 PM

Quote:

Why Linux is not for You, Part 4

I'd like to conclude by saying that I realize a lot of my points seem to follow similar lines, they are almost sub points of one another. So if the article seemed a bit redundant at times, I do apologize. I feel as though these points, although pretty much all along the same line of thought are separate and simply tie in to each other very well. The ability and desire to use Linux as an OS requires that you have the ability and desire to learn it as your OS, and this would assume you are able to upgrade, install, and entertain yourself etc. Most people lack the desire to use Linux and therefore end up simply as people with the desire NOT to use windows, so they move to Linux very halfheartedly (See point #1).

Secondly I'd like to just respond to some of the obvious comments that I'll probably get from Windows users and Linux users alike.

-- If everyone thought like the guy who wrote this article, Linux would go no where. He makes it clear that he really only cares that it fits him and as long as that's done and over with Linux is the best OS in his eyes.

Apparently whoever might say this hasn't read what I've said good enough. In the end I do summarize by saying I use Linux because it does what I want it to do, and I could really care less if it appeals to Joe Blow desktop users, but throughout I make it very clear that I'm not the only Linux user, and that most Linux users seem to have a similar line of thought. Not so much that we should just abandon the end user and tell them to RTFM, but the fact is that Linux wasn't created to satisfy the end user, the developer, or anyone really. It was created to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of Linus Torvalds. Where it expanded to after that it did so not by saying "We need to make this so that Joe Blow can use it." but by saying "We need to make this so that we can use it." After all, very few Linux Open Source Software developers don't use Linux, if any, and by that I mean, on the initial level, almost all software we use on Linux was probably started by someone saying "I wish I had that." not "I wish you had that."

-- You said it yourself that "Linux will destroy Microsoft." So how does this make you any different from someone who tells everyone else to get on the Linux bandwagon cause it's so much better than the Windows one?

Saying that Linux will destroy Microsoft doesn't mean that I think Linux is better in every aspect. I do firmly believe Linux COULD be better in every aspect, and this is solely because of it's Open Source model. I realize right now, however, that Linux doesn't do everything everyone wants, but I refuse to say that it CAN'T do that stuff. Linux destroying Microsoft is a consequence of where we know Linux is going in the next ten years having already seen where it's gone in the last ten. Linux development has been almost exponential and there are tons of new and exciting technologies out there that not only represent the power of it as an OS, but the power of it as a development platform. Think about AA lib... I remember programs that converted images to ASCII after a long "render" time.... this thing converts images to ASCII at lightning speeds, so fast that you're able to play video games and watch movies in text only with some not so low but not so high definition. Take a couple steps back and you're sure to be impressed. I've been using Linux since Kernel 1.1 -- What I've seen Linux do since that time I think it would have taken Microsoft triple that time to do on Windows. The problem is that Linux developers can't stop here, and I know they won't. What we see right now is a trend to mimic Windows. You may recall an article recently on OSnews that claimed in order for Linux to make any sort of an impact developers would need to contribute to the "great good." The author said that the overall necessity was to get developers to join onto projects which already had the blunt of the work done but lacked "perfection." I disagree with this completely, because I think it's better that Linux developers constantly think of new ways to do things. For example, I don't think that an environment with menus, icons, and windows is the only and best Graphical User Environment. Mimicking what we already have is good enough to convince people we can do as good, but I think we can do better. And in order to do better we need developers who are willing to make new applications with innovative ideas and quite possibly completely never before seen methods of doing whatever users want to do on the computer. This is also why I'm a big supporter of projects like DirectFB which aims to create a new method (with many new features to) for displaying graphics on Linux systems.