Slashdot Mirror
Why the World Is Not Ready For Linux
eldavojohn writes "While many users reading Slashdot embrace Linux, ZDNet is running an article on why the rest of the world isn't ready. One note for Linux developers: 'Stop assuming that everyone using Linux (or who wants to use Linux) is a Linux expert.' While a lot of these topics have been brought up as both stories and comments on Slashdot, this article pretty much sums up why Vista could be absolutely terrible, and people would still believe there is no other option." From the article: "The one area of Linux ownership and use where it becomes apparent that there's an assumption that everyone who uses Linux is an expert is hardware support. Your average user doesn't have the time, the energy or the inclination to deal with uncertainty. Also, they usually only have the one PC to play with. Hardware just has to work. There's a very good reason why Microsoft spends a lot of time on hardware compatibility — it's what people want."
I believe in people. Sometimes it is hard to, but for the most part I believe that people can be smart or become smart. They are just not given the oppurtunity to be. Companies like Microsoft usually don't try to allow people be smart, in fact its usually the case that these companies develop a business model based around people being ignorant and lazy. You can tell by how they word their agreements, marketing material and by what they leave out.
The unix way (besides do one thing and do it well) however is to allow beginners and experts in, and help them leverage themselves so that they can be intelligent and productive in how they work. I don't care if everyone adopts Linux, but I do care if the people who want to work intelligently and are willing to be intelligent are shut out of it. I encounter people all the time who want to learn Linux for the sake of learning it. These are open minded people who want to be smart. Maybe they are smart, maybe they aren't. But honestly that doesn't matter, if they have the will, then Linux will probably work fine for them.
This comment is not meant to "save the world" or anything so grandious. It is only meant as a retort to jackass e-zine writers who don't have the desire to give it a try and have no faith in the concept of community.
> Even compiling and installing a driver or two isn't rocket science.
Holy cow, are you even hearing yourself saying this? Most of the people I know that are not in the computer biz have a hard time just wrapping their mind around the concept of a directory hierarchy and the difference between a file and a folder. And then tell these people to cd into folder x and type "make", and then insmod the compiled module? Or explaining to them why some drivers are in the kernel, while others are installable modules, right after explaining what a kernel is and what it's good for? This attitude is exactly what the original article is addressing.