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Linux Advocacy From the Trenches

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the duck-and-cover dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Tom Adelstein, longtime Linux advocate and consultant has spent the last year working closely with state, local, and federal government open source software initiatives. Tom launched Government Forge,spearheaded the Open Source bill in Texas and other programs. Tom shares the grass roots efforts that have offered him an insider's view of what is propelling Linux toward critical mass and the desktop. He shares his view of Linux "from the trenches" in this interview."

2 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. advocate vs. zealot by sczimme · · Score: 5, Interesting


    I recommended that instead of going forward with the migration, that we educate users and build support internally first.

    In response to perceived resistance, he decided to back off a bit and get "buy-in" from the people that actually would be using OpenOffice.org; IMO this was a smart move.

    I cringe whenever I see rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth zealots - regardless of topic (OS, programming language, political party, etc. - spouting off and alienating the people they are trying to convert. Such zealots hurt the cause they are trying to help.

    As an aside, I picture a modified logo and an advertisement for "A55 Hat Linux", a distro developed 'specially for the zealots...

    --
    I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
  2. Learning Linux by Trolling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When I started out, I'd ask for help and people would say read the man pages. I didn't know what man pages were. Was Linux really that gay? I laugh when I think about that now. I discovered that you'd never get an answer to a problem from Linux Gurus by asking. You have to troll in order for someone to help you with a Linux problem.

    For example, I didn't know how to find files by contents and the man pages were way too confusing. What did I do? I knew from experience that if I just asked, I'd be told to read the man pages even though it was too hard for me. Instead, I did what works. Trolling. By stating that Linux sucked because it was so hard to find a file compared to Windows, I got every self-described Linux Guru around the world coming to my aid. They gave me examples after examples of different ways to do it. All this in order to prove to everyone that Linux was better.

    So if you're starting out Linux, I advise you to use the same method as I did to get help. Start the sentence with "Linux is gay because it can't do XXX like Windows can". You will have PhDs running to tell you how to solve your problems.