Perception of Linux Among IT Undergrads

iconian writes: "The Linux Journal has a story on IT students and their perception of Linux. One of the funnier myths perceived to be true is that 'Microsoft's technical support is the best in the industry and is superior to that offered by the Linux community.' It just goes to show how little real world experience students have. It's a bit disturbing considering they will be the next generation of technology workers."

Comments

A bit pessimistic?

[FireballFreddy]

This is one more reason people turn to Windows instead of Linux: The uber-geek egotistical superiority complex of the loudest Linux users. And unfortunately, the loudest are the ones who get heard.

Do you even realize what you just wrote? You completely discounted about about 7 years worth of students (assuming "late 90s" includes 1995 forward). Well guess what? I graduated in the "late 90s" and I was in love with UNIX. And it was taught to me by others who would also graduate in the "late 90s". They taught me about all kinds of flavors (FreeBSD, Solaris, Irix, HP-UX, and Ultrix to name a few). And yes, even Linux (I popped my cherry on Slackware).

I think we can all agree, each class has those who exceed, those who do just enough to pass, and those who suck. Those who suck are probably too lazy to learn Visual Basic, so screw them. Those who do just enough to pass might not be "Uber-Geeks", but they'll get jobs doing the easier work, and get paid handsomely for it. Good for them. They probably don't want to work in your on-campus lab anyway, since you sound about as friendly and willing to teach as the BOFH.

As for those who exceed... let's just hope they can work their magic without being as jaded and biased as you seem to be.

-FF

Re:Have you ever used Microsoft Technical Support?

[mosch]

Yeah, they've done a great job for me in charging $300 or whatever it was, not solving the problem, then closing the ticket with an unresolved answer.

Their support is a joke if you're asking a question where something actually went wrong, instead of it being a problem between the keyboard and the chair.

(Just a note, they have always refunded the money a month or two after deducing that they had no fucking clue what was wrong though)

Re:MS VS. Linux techsupport

[scrytch]

It's a pretty commonly known fact that commercial software vendors release products with known, but usually obscure, bugs in place so they can make you pay support costs later as your encunter [sic] these bugs.

It's a commonly known fact that GWB and OBL were drinking buddies in college, and that yer mom really isn't as much a screamer as they say... You can't just throw out complete bullshit and preface it by saying "everybody knows" and not expect to get called on it.

They release products with bugs because they won't trip for most people, can patch them later, and the alternative is shipping the product 10 years late at 10 times the price tag.