Linux Snobs, The Real Barriers to Entry

McSnarf writes "It's not Windows. It's not distro wars. Sometimes it's just the arrogant attitude that keeps people from switching from Windows. 'As I spoke to newbies, one Windows user who wanted to learn about Linux shared the encouraging and constructive note (not) he received from one of the project members. The responding note read: "Hi jackass, RTFM and stop wasting our time trying to help you children learn.""

Comments

duh

[gEvil (beta)]

Well duh! Of course it's the arrogant users that are keeping people from trying Linux. That's precisely the reason why I use a Mac.

Re:duh

[elrous0]

That's precisely the reason why I use a Mac.

I managed to escape from that cult, and you can too brother!

Meet me by the fence tonight at 1am. I'll have a van waiting. We can take you to a place where Father Steve will never find you. There is another life out there for you, trust me!

-Eric

Re:duh

[identity0]

Are you kidding me? The Mac community is composed of 30% latte-sipping wannabe 'artists', 50% trendsters with too much money, 25% hippies, 4% Hollywood actors, and 1% Steve Jobs. And Steve is the least arrogant one of the bunch.

That's why I Switched(tm) to OpenBSD, the least arrogant OS community!

I can go up to the head development guy, Theo, and he answers all my questions!! Usually the answer is how evil George Bush and Richard Stallman are, and how stupid I am for being a stupid American that supports stupid people and asks stupid questions because I am stupid. I don't know how that solves my problems, but at least he answers!!!!

Stupid Steve Jobs never answered my love letters. Arrogant bastard!!!

The correct way to ask a Linux user a question

[xIcemanx]

Certainly not: 'As I spoke to newbies, one Windows user who wanted to learn about Linux shared the encouraging and constructive note (not) he received from one of the project members. The responding note read: "Hi jackass, RTFM and stop wasting our time trying to help you children learn.""

Just do what this guy does and you'll be fine.

Re:An Unfortunate Reality

[schabot]

Just remember....you were a n00b yourself once...

Speak for yourself. After my mother re-partitioned her drive and mounted the smaller one at "/womb" I was compiled from source.

Re:An Unfortunate Reality

[Henry V .009]

Half the stuff mounted there was foreign binaries that she could have got from anywhere.

Jesus Christ, this post is all Linux porn innuendo

[AEton]

Dear Penthouse Forum,
My freshman year (2000) in college started with me not knowing what a "linux" was. This all changed when a friend encouraged me to repartition my hard drive and install this next to my installation. I ended up doing fresh installs and getting the dual boot to work.

The next day in class, the guy couldn't get me to shut up about how great it was.

My first college kegger could not compare to the first time I ran Linux. Nor would a kegger ever be as memorable.

Ok, so my first encounter with Linux people working against Linux people in a childish d*ck measuring contest. To my horror, I overheard the following conversation thereafter ensue between him and a person in the class looking for a Linux installation experience:

Student B: "I use Windows and I'm confused even as where to start..."
Student A: "That's easy, just install Gentoo."
Student B: "I ... Where do I get a disc for that?"
Student A: "They're freely online, you just have to find them and install them. And with Gentoo, you can just emerge whenever you want."
Student B: "'Emerge'--what does that mean?"

When I got home, I tried to install Gentoo. It took forever, I hit a million snags but eventually got it working. I hated it. After talking again to them, Student A revealed that he spent every Sunday night "emerging."

Luckily, I intevened and gave him something close. I told him all the cautionary advice I had to give and I feel that he most closely identified with me.

The truth is: not all Linux experiences are for everybody.

Love and kisses,
esr

Re:Bizarre

[Alioth]

I've been doing Linux since January 1992. But I don't know everything.

I've found the best way to deal with the snobs - and get a useful answer - is this. Don't just ask "I've googled for it already, but I can't find a way of doing foo with bar". All this will yield is "Well google harder" kind of responses.

Instead, say something like "On Windows, it's really easy to do foo with bar, but it's completely impossible under Linux! This is awful!". You will immediately be deluged with indignant responses telling you exactly how to do whatever it was you were trying to accomplish rather than an RTFM brush-off.