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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.""
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.
This guy's the limit!
My freshman year (2000) in college started with me not knowing what a "linux" was. This all changed when a friend handed me a Debian distribution burned to an ISO. He encouraged me to repartition my hard drive and install this next to my Windows 98 SE installation. Like a lot of new people, I hosed my hard drive. I ended up doing fresh installs on both OS's and getting the dual boot to work. There were cheap little games and some truly great and historical open source software on that disc also. The next day in class, the guy couldn't get me to shut up about how great it was. I had hit a few snags but the answers were all online.
... Where do I get a disc for that?"
My first college kegger could not compare to the first time I ran Linux. Nor would a kegger ever be as memorable. A free operating system? That works?
A year or two later, I'm in a new class. There's a kid sitting in front of me going on and on about Linux. Up to this point, I've used Debian, Mandrake & Red Hat so I drop a question out there:
Me: "I really like Mandrake, what do you think is the best distribution?"
Student A: "It's obviously Gentoo."
Me: "Gentoo? I haven't even heard of that one..."
Student A: "Well, it's clearly the superior distribution."
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
Student A: "They're freely online, you just have to find them and install them--I recommend an ftp install so that you get the latest versions of everything. And with Gentoo, you can just emerge whenever you want to update. "
Student B: "'Emerge'--what does that mean?"
Student A: *snorts* "If I have to tell you, there's no point in you even getting Linux."
And on it went, with Student A asserting his superiority. 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, the only reason Student A was using Gentoo was because he had some crazy chipset he needed to compile everything for (a dual AMD setup which was rare back then) and he also revealed that he spent every Sunday night "emerging."
Luckily, I intevened with Mandrake and gave him something close to Windows that an idiot probably could install. 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.
My work here is dung.
Astounding. You've taken a sane, logical article and replied to it in the exact illogical, impassioned manner it criticizes. You, sir, are a poster child for a Linux snob. The article encourages you to stop talking, essentially. Read it again, because it is wholly and entirely accurate.
My story, aside from parent: I'm trying to install Mailman a year or so back. I have a base Debian install. I'm stuck. I RTFM. It's not that I can't, or that I don't want to, it's that I quite simply don't understand what it's telling me to do. I don't know what an Exim director is, and the manual thingy doesn't really care to say, only that I need to configure Mailman to work with it. (Since then, it's been updated to be a bit more descriptive. I just checked.)
So, I ask. The response? A snub. Worded from a community member to a third person for me to read: "Maybe the problem isn't Mailman or any of the other awesome software he's running, it's the user not reading all the available documentation."
I note that I read it, but I don't understand it. No response at all.
These days, I have one Debian box with ZoneMinder and Mailman sitting here and everything else is still Windows. I'm quite happy with that.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
You know, I just can't imagine why anyone would call Linux users snobs.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This article seems as much flamebait as anything.
;)
I read through and a lot of what he was describing sounded like listening to the anonymous cowards on here.
Asking a Mac user which is the best operating system will result in one answer, asking a linux user to discuss the various distros is another.
Audiophiles will deride a newbie for asking silly questions, gamers will take the piss out of n00bs for aiming wrong or asking about the best weapons, hell even office staff will give you a 10 minute diorama about their red stapler, but if you ask them what the differences are they will fly off at the handle.
Nobody knows about all the distros or databases and theres not really a one size fits all solution so people get embedded in their current system.
Sounds like he just found people on their off days, but I agree with the general article contents - it extends to all walks of life and multiple subjects.
And I've not even touched on vi vs emacs
liqbase
You RTFMed. I'm impressed. I've been told to RTFM when the FM is four versions out of date and filled with sections of "TODO: write this."
Open Source software documentation reminds me of Wikipedia: read it for help, but if it's not written yet, write it then read it.
Yes, I know the software comes with no warranty or support, but the notion of "you get what you pay for" is as strong as ever in many circles.
For more information, click here.
One huge difference is that the Microsoft tech support guys are paid to listen to your stupidities. You are a lot more patient and understanding when you're paid.
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.
And every time I mentioned it in the past I got my ass handed to me on a plate. I've asked questions in forums, emailed software maintainers, and done the RTFM, and read the FAQs. And sometimes there are no answers, yet you get the same old "RTFM, n00b" answer, followed by "STFU." Nice. It also doesn't help that some of the documentation on TLDP.org is out of date--which is one step away from being outright wrong when dealing with rapidly changing software. If Linux wants more users (or OSS in general) you need to (1) fix the documentation so that it's always up to date to the newest version; and, (2) fix the culture of the dipshits that are out there. If they don't want to help, that's fine; but to hear over and over again the same unhelpful advise is only shooting your cause in the foot.
....
Do I care that this will cost me Karma? Nope. You've had it coming, and I've lost Karma before on this so
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.
[This] will lead to people that are unable and unwilling to experiment with software. Half of what I have learned regarding software has been trial and error.
That may suit you learning style, but for others it is extraordinarily frustrating. We need to be able to include everyone in this community. Users who do not have the inclination, or time, to use trial and error should be able to post on help message boards without getting flamed. Sadly, in the Linux community, noob has become an mark of shame. Its absurd and counter-productive. We do not entice new users very well at all, and it is to our detriment.
At this point I was accused of "bitching about service provided for free" and "its a wiki, feel free to contribute and edit it".
I've gotten that too. It's very strange. I'm looking in the Wiki because I don't know the answer. When I see the answer isn't there, I'm not the person you want to edit it. What am I supposed to do, write down how I'd *like* it to work?
I'm not sure what kind of person Linux snobs think they're dealing with. Snobs seem to assume that ordinary users aren't asking questions because they want to know the answers, but because they want to catch the snobs in a mistake. I wonder what social group interacts that way. Oh, geeks. Right.
The Linux Fault Threshold is the point in any conversation about Linux at which your interlocutor stops talking about how your problem might be solved under Linux and starts talking about how it isn't Linux's fault that your problem cannot be solved under Linux. Half the time, the LFT is reached because there is genuinely no solution (or no solution has been developed yet), while half the time, the LFT is reached because your apologist has floundered way out of his depth in offering to help you and is bullshitting far beyond his actual knowledge base. In either case, a conversation which has reached the LFT has precisely zero chance of ever generating useful advice for you; it is safe at this point to start calling the person offering the advice a fucking moron, and basically take it from there. Here's an example taken from IRC logs to help you understand the concept.
Half the stuff mounted there was foreign binaries that she could have got from anywhere.
Love and kisses,
esr
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
This has been true for as long as I can remember. If the software is inadequate or confusing, blame the user. It's happened to me, even here on Slashdot.
Way back in the stone age.... sometime in 1997, maybe? Maybe 1998. Not sure. Anyway... Linux was _just_ starting to get deployed occasionally in business. I had a couple of DNS servers up on an early RedHat box. The box lost power... these were just desktop machines sitting in someone's cubicle. (We hadn't grown to the point of needing 'real' servers quite yet, and an actual server room was a year off.) My primary box took a LOT of filesystem damage, and it took me ages to fix it. So I commented in a slashdot thread that ext2 was very fragile, and that it was one of Linux's real weak points.
You just wouldn't believe the crap I got. Slashdot doesn't seem to archive that far back, so I can't give you links, but _most_ of the replies I got blamed me for being stupid. I "should have used a UPS"... ok, I could grant that, but remember we were a shoestring outfit, and we didn't need those on Windows servers. A couple people went off on me for, get this, not knowing how to use a disk editor to find my secondary superblocks and repair with those. I kid you not. Linux was perfect, and ANYTHING that went wrong was obviously the user's fault... to the point that I should know how to manually repair my filesystem. Instead of admitting that the filesystem should survive a power failure, it was my fault for breaking it.
Several years later, after Reiserfs and ext3 came out, we had a similar conversation, also here on Slashdot. Suddenly everyone is all about how great the journaling filesystems are, and how bad ext2 sucks. It was probably even some of the same people, but the original conversation had already been lost, so I couldn't prove it.
People just will NOT criticize software they're emotionally involved with. It's the most ridiculous thing I've seen... these theoretically intelligent, rational software designers that become absolutely insane when you suggest their software is imperfect. Blame the user! "You're just too stupid to use our software. Go away."
Fortunately, there's enough people in the Linux community now that the lunatic fringe doesn't dominate quite like it did, but these people are still out there.
It was ridiculous then, and it's just as ridiculous now. It doesn't happen as much, but it still sucks.
This whole argument is stupid. People do flame each other, it's just a fact. We could just as well sit around and wring our hands that the Internet would be more popular if the "online community" would just be more friendly and all the pedophiles and spammers would mend their ways. It's true, but it's also a rather pointless discussion.
I agree wholeheartedly with you. I've had my share of "gorilla gurus" who are not above intellectual bullying when someone asks a question.
I am reminded of the attitudes displayed in Ray Bradbury's story "The Other Foot," in which (for those who may not recall) a town full of black people who emigrated to Mars en masse shortly before World War III find out that they will be receiving white refugees. Their immediate impulse is to start putting "Blacks Only" signs on restaurants and hotels, thus re-creating the situation that they had fled years before, only with themselves at the top.
Many of these "gorilla gurus" have most likely been on the receiving end of derision and scorn for not working with Windows, and have also either been given the same treatment when they started learning about Linux. It becomes like the geek version of the stereotypical fraternity, where these people associate poor manners with the rights of the "initiated," and now that they find themselves in a position of relative power are prepared to make those under them pay and pay and pay.
So much for a possible cause. A solution? Perhaps reminding these people that the same attitudes pervaded the Commodore 64 user groups... and where are they now?
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
This happened to me. I was interested in hacking my TiVo (standalone 540-series) which is pretty much unhackable without a PROM modification. But I had managed to look through some of the files that I'd copied off the TiVo hard drive and I had some questions about one of the file formats. I looked through the SeriesII forum as well as a lot of searching and didn't find the answers to my questions, so I posted. Big mistake. :(
Please understand, I'm not new to Linux. I've been teaching a Linux Internals course for a few years now, as well as device driver development, kernel debugging, and so forth. I know a little bit about the Linux kernel. What I didn't know was the boot process used on the TiVo. I was slammed by the forum moderator ("RTFM in the Newbies section"). I thought I had done that, after already spending hours+hours of searching and reading posts that were too old to apply to my unit.
Until... I went back to the newbie forum and read every one of the sticky articles and I found 80% of the information I was looking for (sigh). Part of the problem was that the newbie forum has about 15 sticky articles, some of them with 40 pages of posts in a single thread. Experience had taught me that most of those are too old to apply to my unit, so I would open the thread and jump to the last page, working backwards through the thread, to see if I could find something relevant. Well, the information was actually in the first few posts -- the community had been editing that post and updating it as time went by.
My point to all this is that newbies often post in an area that is for developers; they should start with places like linuxquestions.org or other generic Q&A sites, then progress from there. The people that frequent those sites want to help others, not write code. They're the newbie's best chance of having their questions answered.
> Most people want everything handed to them
No - most people just don't care about computers all that much.
Do you expect people to tinker with their cars?
Do you expect people to tinker with their television's wiring?
Do you expect people to tinker with their plumbing?
Then why would you expect people to tinker with their computers? For most people, a computer is an appliance, and deserving of no more tinkering than a tv. You can whine about people being "not ready" for computers all you want, but that won't change the basic fact that mature technologies don't need to be babied to function properly.
It isn't people that aren't ready; it's computers.
lyapunov wrote:
> Most people want everything handed to them, and if you do not have a self started attitude UNIX is fairly intimidating.
No, my friend. Most people want their computer to work, just like any other appliance.
Most people use cars to get them and their families from point A to point B. Those that supercharge their engines, lower the suspension, etc. are a tiny minority.
Same goes for VCRs, dishwashers, telephones, etc. They are supposed to make our lives simpler by saving us time and allowing us to spend it on things we consider more important.
How is a computer different?
People want to communicate, shop, pay bills and trade online, play games, read news, work, organize their photo albums, balance their budgets and many other things a computer is suitable for. They rarely want to spend huge significant time and effort just to be able to do that.
> I spent another 6 months getting my printer to work.
Your perseverance is commendable but are you sure that it was the best use of a 6 months time?
> Why won't my fucking Linux computer print?
This kind of belligerent, vague question is probably the reason this person doesn't get answers. Very few people with actual, genuine clue are going to get involved when the person asking hasn't even tried to make their initial question complete or useful. It not only looks like this person has an attitude but that they are also going to make anyone who answers do a lot of work to get enough clear information out of them, such as their set up and what they've tried already, so they can give an answer. Many people help others on IRC (without being paid, in their own, personal free time) because they enjoy it, and if it looks like someone is going to be unnecessarily hard to help, many will just go do something else.