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Fighting FUD with Humor
Technophiliac writes to tell us MadPenguin in running a review of "Fighting FUD With Humor" Marcel Gagné's 2nd edition of "Moving to Linux". From the article: "The biggest obstacle is fear. Modern Linux distributions are easy to install and easy to use. Unfortunately, we are constantly presented with messages telling us that it's too hard and that the average person couldn't possibly grasp the complexity. That's rubbish. People aren't stupid and people who use computers learn new things all the time."
People don't want to switch because they think they need office. Simple as that.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
People are smart... Someone doesn't deal with the public...
People aren't stupid and people who use computers learn new things all the time."
Clearly, this person has never performed basic tech support. I mean, come on. If you have that much faith in humanity, you've never done time as "The I.T. Guy" in a typical office. Turn in your geek card, sir, and report to AOL for further processing.
People aren't stupid
No, but they're easily confused.
and people who use computers learn new things all the time.
Hard to believe, given that most non-technical people (and some of the technical ones) in my building haven't even learned not to double-click URLs. When things don't work, it's attributed to gremlins, and when it does work, it's attributed to a higher diety.
I'm sorry, but the REAL obstacles (hint: fear isn't one of them) to adopting an entirely new operating system don't go away just by putting your fingers in your ears and shouting, "NAH NAH NAH, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!"
Not for someone from the Windows world, anyway. If you need to configure anything that isn't out of the box, like latest graphics card support or wireless, you're left out in the cold. You'll have to spend hours Googling for people that have gotten it to work or clues as to how it might work. Then more hours editing configuration files, compiling, rebooting...sometimes all spent in vain.
If there is ONE thing Windows is good at, it is getting stuff configured. It may not be as powerful or flexible, but at least it is easy. Sometimes, you just need to get things done.
I'm a computer geek. There was a period where Linux was too hard for me to install -- I tried and failed a few times. Finally, about four years ago, the installs got easier (and I learned more) so I got a working install. But it's simply not true that Linux is now easy enough for most computer users to install and use. Most computer users are not computer geeks, and in fact, no OS is easy enough for them to install. They'd have trouble installing Windows from scratch too, but they never had to do it because Windows came preinstalled.
Just last week I installed the latest Ubuntu. There were two problems that it took me some time and hassles to work out: (1) The sound software I was trying to use didn't work in GNOME, because GNOME uses ESD. I had to do a "killall esd" before it would work. This took some detective work, because none of the software gave me an error message that told me this was what the problem was. (2) I couldn't install some libraries (such as libc6-dev) because they were in a munged state at the point where I did my apt-get update.
These were time-consuming, frustrating annoyances for me, but for someone who's not a computer geek, they'd be total showstoppers. The average person simply is not going to go looking for help on usenet or IRC (and my experience with posting on the Ubuntu forums has been that I don't get any useful replies, either). The average person will give up.
And BTW, Gagne might want to update the subtitle of his book, "Kiss the blue screen of death goodbye." I have to use Windows a lot at work. I haven't seen a BSOD in years.
Find free books.
How do we fight the FUD of the FUD fighters?
Can we be honest with ourselves for just one second?
Claiming that Linux is "easy" to configure is a prima facia falsehood.
Install is still only about 80-85% not the 99.9% that it needs to be.
Maintenence of a 6+ month old distro, any distro, is a nightmare as about that time updating no longer works because dependancies on updated dependancies reach an unmanageable threshold. And no, ignoring maintenence is not an option.
It doesn't anyone any good to spout platitudes about how "easy" Linux is when there are still huge gaping holes in it's ease of use.
The only way to fight FUD is with truth, not more FUD!
Incidentally, writing introductory books like "Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye!" seems to me to be a dead end. Seething haters of Microsoft (and even they haven't seen a BSOD in five years) don't make up a significant share of Windows users, and pandering to that mentality seems counterproductive.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
If Gagne's so sure the average user is more than willing to learn new things, then he can be the one to walk my mother through downloading ISOs for the latest Mandrake build, helping her pick which items to install, explaining why she needs a "gui" (and what it is) and then helping her pick between KDE, Gnome...
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
I spent 15 minutes yesterday trying to disable autoplay (for all drives, not just the cdrom) in Windows. In the end I had search on the internet to find the solution, download a program and do some very non-intuitive stuff.
In GNOME I just go to System->Preferences->Removable Drives and Media.
Everybody has stories of how they have had a hard time with an OS. It's all just anecdotes which don't prove anything. For me, Linux is easy and pretty because it's what I'm used to. When I have to use Windows it's unfamiliar and illogical. And it sure as hell isn't pretty.
BTW, the reason I had to disable autoplay is because it was going crazy grinding the system to a halt whenever I connected a usb drive. Never happens in Linux. But again, that's just another anecdote. Doesn't prove anything. I just wish folks from the other side could admit the same thing whey they're talking about the problems they've had with Linux.
Ignoring the fact that IQ is far from a necessarily accurate indicator of intelligence, what's your point? Half the people are smarter, too.
People can talk about the "chaos that reigns the world" and attribute it to stupidity all day. Stick those people in a sociology class for a week and hopefully they'll realize that the world is not a damned simple as they think. To attribute a presidential reelection to something like national stupidity is just plain ignorant. Mostly because matters of politics don't correlate well to intelligence at all (and if someone quotes one of thoe hoax IQ maps of the US I'll punch him in the face. Through my monitor).
Yeah, the average person may or may not be dumber than you. Yeah, there are people even dumber than him. There are also people you'd like like a damn fool next to. I'll say it again: What the hell is your point?
no, you are absolutely correct... it's true... but, the one really unhelpful person is the one you remember... there are a lot of *really* helpful people kicking it on IRC waiting for questions from people doing their first install, but they don't stick in one's memory quite the same way
He's not making a recommendation that people use outlook at home. He's saying "you must use outlook." And I know that's not true, as I have my mother set up with Thunderbird and it works fine. What he could say is "I recommend and can only give support to outlook." That would be another story all together. That would make his job just as easy. In this case, he either he doesn't know you can use another e-mail client (he is an mcse moron), or he blatently lied when he said you had to use outlook (He's a liar). But whatever, I guess that makes him perfectly qualified for a rank job in the public school system.
My whole point however, which we've drifted from, is that this reliance, or just perceived reliance on Microsoft products is institutionalized. People hear this kind of stuff every single day, much of it false, from people who are supposed to know what they are talking about. This everyday experience drives the notion that Microsoft is a necessity.
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
Linux could be easy. My mother, who had expressed pride in never having used a computer, recently discovered, quite by accident, just how much stuff was available on eBay. I had a surplus IBM 300GL sitting about, so I loaded it up with Mandriva 2005. There were the little problems: hiding toolbars accidently, moving the mouse while clicking (accidental drags), not recognizing interface modality. The vanilla hardware on the P3 based desktop installed easily for me, and after setting auto-login for her, setting up her email accounts and bookmarks, Gnome was easy for her. She found a few challenges, so I tried giving her a Macintosh. We went back to the Linux machine quickly.
That having been said, I've used linux before, I've used Windows. If you want to install something not included in the distro, you're in for some work. I tried installing FreeNX on Mandriva over a SSH terminal. I never did get it working. Apropos hadn't been set up by default, and install was failing on a file whose package I couldn't find.
So, here's what I want in Linux:
Be better than Windows. Where windows wants to tell you every five minutes that your wireless connection is down even though you're working on a wired connection and your laptop's wifi switch is off, be smarter. Tell the user once, if you must, then leave them alone.
Install all the docs by default. Never assume that your user doesn't need man pages.
Label each program with a name that describes what it does. Look at Windows accessories. Most of the program names are much less abstract. Backup, Address Book, Notepad, Command Prompt, Backup, Security Center, Disk Defragmenter, Disk Cleanup. So, what's easier, drakxconf or Control Panel? Let's also map some commands to likely alternatives. man is good, but what if help worked too? Maybe if help pointed to an overview of man, apropos, lynx and some docs?
Usabilty testing by non programmers. I like vi about as much as the average person. That is, not very. compared to the MS-DOS edit.exe, vi is pretty weak. Or rather, it's very strong, but it makes what should be a 100% intuitive task for anyone familiar with a computer into a series of random button-pushing and man-reading sessions.
Build a roadmap.So, this distro wants the config file here, and that distro wants it there. Super! Fine! But if you want to put this sort of thing all over, how about building a map? I'd love to be able to download a single installer, run it (in the gui!) let it figure out where everything is, what needs to be downloaded, what dependencies need satisfying. Fix it all, and exit. I hate installing software that didn't come with the distro currently. Windows does this well, Mac does this well, why is this so hard for Linux?
Welcome your users. Sure, you may never click through the overly-animated Welcome to Windows intro. Some people will. Just a quick tour of the nifty little features of your OS, some quick pointers to the help, the configuration, the browser, the email, and most people will be fine. Add a world-class tutorial. Back in the days of the classic Mac OS, there were tutorials that included clicking, double clicking, dragging, hovering, typing, text entry fields, dialog boxes (modal and non-modal) menus, powering off. The basics that most of us nerds don't remember learning have to be taught to some people! Linux should teach them, by default.
Most people don't know what they are doing in windows, even kids with good marks at school and college continually do and say really really stupid things. people are stupid.
"How the fuck am I supposed to support 500 different pieces of software?"
Insightful? What are you people on? What does MS specifically have to do with making sure that the client who needs support uses (tada, drum shot) supported software?
Obviously, sane people who offer technical support (and want to remain sane) will make sure first thing that the clients will be using only stuff they (the support) know about! What exactly that thing is (MS products or a KDE suite) is irrelevant, as long as both the client and the support person know what it is.
So there's no inherent advantage to using MS products, unless you're already locked in because your support contractor only supports MS products.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer