Woman Claims Ubuntu Kept Her From Online Classes

stonedcat writes "A Wisconsin woman has claimed that Dell computers and Ubuntu have kept her from going back to school via online classes. She says she has called Dell to request Windows instead however was talked out of it. Her current claim is that she was unaware that she couldn't install her Verizon online disk to access the Internet, nor could she use Microsoft Word to type up her papers."

Comments

Re:Expected

[samtihen]

Well, I was going to go into a tirade about how stupid the girl is, but the reality is that she called to explain the mixup and Dell somehow convinced her to keep Ubuntu. Dell, if someone calls and says they got a Ubuntu computer by mistake, just have them ship it back. It isn't worth it.

Humor? Entertainment?

[Thyamine]

Why is this listed as being humorous? /. generally bemoans the fact that normal users don't use Linux, and that people just assume Windows for everything. And yet here is a normal person, trying to use it, and finding it frustrating and causing her problems, and people mock her attempt.

This is a real problem

[daveschroeder]

Actually, this story did cause some criticism, which resulted in a followup story (even calling it "Ubunto" once - nice). So more angry (or informative) letters from Linux-advocates aren't going to set the record straight at this point.

But it does raise a larger question about the adoption of Linux. How can the perception that Microsoft Windows and its trappings are effectively mandatory be overcome? Her computer can handle all of her needs: email, web browsing via Firefox, Microsoft Office-compatible documents via OpenOffice.org, and no need to "install" any Windows-only "Verizon High Speed Internet CD" to use Verizon DSL.

But since many Linux-advocates presumably want to see things like Ubuntu go mainstream, the answer can't be "this woman is a moron and the TV station is worse for covering it". Her problems, even if they seem ridiculous, were real enough to her. So how do you counter this kind of problem? (Some might say decent journalism could have helped here, but that's part and parcel of the perception problem.)

Re:This is a real problem

[db32]

I don't blame the woman at all. Her complaints are entirely legitimate and are a direct result of marketing based education. NO ONE explains how anything fucking works these days. Its all "put the CD in and MAGIC!" So of course the populace has no fucking clue what is going on with how stuff works or even how to choose an alternative product. That is kind of the point of this style of marketing education. You don't want educated consumers, you want consumers that believe whatever you tell them.

I have had this battle on multiple occasions with my online classes trying to explain that I don't use Windows or MS Office. The difference is that I am an experienced user and I actually understand why the college is incorrect. They say it "requires Office XYZ" but what they mean is "you need to be able to create and edit Word compatible documents". Most users are going to take the statement "requires Office XYZ" literally because they don't understand the alternatives, and the people saying "requires Office XYZ" are probably even less likely to understand that there are even alternatives available.

Re:This is a real problem

[TheRealMindChild]

Once upon a time, you had to learn how to use a computer to use it. This was an inherent prerequisite to using a computer effectively for school and/or work. Nowadays, any bonehead thinks that a computer needs to do it all for them, and if it doesn't, it is a failing of the system. Could you imagine if your car mechanic came back to you and said "I can't fix your car. My new tools have a green rubber handle. I only know how to use tools with a black spongy handle"...

Re:This is a real problem

[elrous0]

If computers had remained a niche for a handful of knowledgeable uber-geeks instead of going mainstream in the 90's, we wouldn't have such a robust internet today or consumer pricing on computers and components.

Re:This is a real problem

[Tubal-Cain]

By definition, the average IQ is 100.

Re:This is a real problem

[TheRealMindChild]

Well, that is more or less what I was illustrating. You go to a mechanic because you DON'T know how to fix a car. You would want the person who knows what they are doing... actually UNDERSTANDS what is going on, because you don't want to kill your family in a fiery crash because the brakes were put on completely wrong.

Why people nowadays accept people using a computer without having the slightest clue what is going on is just as ridiculous... it just happens to be one that everyone accepts and even empathizes with them. That in itself is sad.

Re:This is a real problem

[JambisJubilee]

Come on, you don't blame her? I can understand if she has computer problems, but let's not pretend that this has anything to do with dropping out of school. She dropped out because she's an idiot, period. What are you willing to bet that the school has a computer lab... oh wait! http://development.matcmadison.edu/matc/studentresources/techresources/

The Student Computer Help staff assist MATC students with questions about:
MATC student email accounts
the Microsoft Office suite,
installing the Wisconsin Integrated Software Catalog products,
Blackboard and various other curriculum-based software packages at MATC.

As I said, there is no excuse. The school has allocated resources to deal with exactly what her problem was, but she couldn't be bothered to lift a finger to educate herself.

This is pretty awesome *for* linux.

[Maxo-Texas]

Because it is major egg on Verizon's face.

The larger the linux market segment gets, the less windows benefits from it's network effect.

As far as the word processor goes- she just needs a clue about Openoffice or some of the other fine WP's available.

Hopefully she isn't going into a technical degree area with this little knowledge of computers at that age.

Re:This is pretty awesome *for* linux.

[Archangel Michael]

I wish I had mod points. (+1) Insightful here

Two parts to the complain, one is on Verizon (do they support Mac and not Linux???). Which isn't Linux or even Ubuntu's fault. In fact, I suspect that if Verizon gave the specs for their device to Linux community, there would be a driver and management software available within a couple of days. No development costs to Verizon at all, and I'm sure they would get all sorts of "attaboys" from the Linux community.

Second part is Word isn't needed to type papers. In fact, if I were Professor at a big U, I wouldn't accept .doc files. Print it, or submit in an open standard. Hell, I'd probably require them to be .txt just so people would have to focus on content, and not on making it "pretty".

 

Re:This is pretty awesome *for* linux.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I've used Verizon before, with *nix machines as well as Wintels. The CD is irrelevant, it just hods your hand through putting a username and password onto the DSL modem(something that the DSL modem's dinky browser based configuration interface also supports) and installs an RNDIS driver to allow you to use the DSL modem as a USB device.

Verizon, presumably in an effort to make things "easier", doesn't talk about what needs to happen(PPPoE configuration) but instead just tells you to use the CD. Easy enough to figure out, though. After all, almost anybody who has a wireless router and Verizon DSL or FIOS is already using a Linux machine with Verizon, even if they don't know it yet.

Re:This is pretty awesome *for* linux.

[Maxo-Texas]

Some will read the article as "Linux prevented girl from using online classes".

The verizon marketing department knows others will read the article as "Verizon prevented girl from using online classes."

Re:This is pretty awesome *for* linux.

[Volante3192]

We might not be car experts but we know it takes gas to run. We might not be TV experts, but we know that the picture comes in over the wires behind it.

But most people I deal with are willingly and even gleefully ignorant of computers, and will actively go out of their way to NOT learn even basic things about how it works, like keeping an eye on disk space.

Re:it figures,

[Shakrai]

why are the cute ones always dumb?

Take comfort in Judge Judy's quote: Beauty fades, but dumb is forever.

CALL VERIZON INSTEAD OF THE NEWS!!!

[MightyYar]

As a result, with no internet and no Microsoft Word, Schubert dropped out of MATC's fall and spring semesters.

Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too.

Re:CALL VERIZON INSTEAD OF THE NEWS!!!

[couchslug]

[quote] Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too. [/quote]

Yeah, send the morons out to operate heavy equipment and then wonder why your underground fiber got cut...

Re:CALL VERIZON INSTEAD OF THE NEWS!!!

[Technician]

Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too.

The world still needs PHD's.

(Post Hole Diggers)

Re:Expected

[fooby12]

That's true, and anyone who has ever passed on a Linux distribution to a friend or family member would know the importance of leaving behind a system that does just work. To me this just looks like someone trying to pass blame. I guess she feels swindled, when in fact she was simply sold something different.

No problem

[ianare]

From TFA :

Verizon says it will dispatch a technician to try to assist her accessing the internet without using the Windows-only installation disk.

MATC also says it promises to accept any of Schubert's papers or class documents using whatever software she has installed.

So what's the fucking problem ?!?

Re:No problem

[MightyYar]

So what's the fucking problem ?!?

The problem is that this girl couldn't figure out how to call Verizon and the school herself. It sounds like Dell worked her over as well, but dropping out of school before calling their help desk is just crazy.

The follow-up is much more interesting...

[RotsiserMho]

At the end of the article is a link to a follow-up by the assistant news director. It's not quite an apology, but it demonstrates that someone in the Ubuntu community got through to someone at the news station: http://addins.wkowtv.com/blogs/behindthenews/

In other news...

[pato101]

...a guy couldn't finish his work because a virus killed his Windows HP computer... and blames HP for it...

RTFM?

[OglinTatas]

If she can't RTFM, how is she going to read the texts for her classes?

Re:it figures,

[Spazztastic]

why are the cute ones always dumb?

Take comfort in Judge Judy's quote: Beauty fades, but dumb is forever.

Or Ron White's line: You can't fix stupid.

Idiocy

[Thanshin]

A Wisconsin woman has claimed that General Motors has kept her from going back to school. She says she has called GM to request a bike instead however was talked out of it. Her current claim is that she was unaware that she couldn't drive.

Huh?

[Logical Zebra]

So the woman is suing the company because she lacks the mental capacity to properly use their product?

Re:Huh?

[LingNoi]

Still not as bad as the women who doesn't understand that -5 is higher then -8.

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1022757_cool_cash_card_confusion

What's depressing is that the clerk was fooled into believing she won too which means there is more then one idiot out there.

Re:Expected

[Ravalox]

I have to agree, reading this can be frustrating to a seasoned posix user but the truth is linux just isn't that simplified iPod solution that appeals to the vast majority of consumers. I use Ubuntu almost exclusively and thrive in a linux environment but my girlfriend doesn't want to use my computer. It's not that she isn't smart, it's that she sees it as this obtuse, obnoxious affront to the status quo. We know it's not, but that's an example of one of several perceptual barriers Linux is going to have to vault over.

Exactly

[daveschroeder]

This connects with what I just said below you.

Sure, we can mock it, but there are real issues here:

- She doesn't know that she doesn't need to install any "Verizon High Speed Internet CD" in order for her Verizon DSL to function.

- She doesn't know that OpenOffice.org can handle her needs for "Microsoft Word" just fine

- She probably wouldn't know that Firefox can handle all of her browsing needs even where another OS is specified (under most circumstances)

So how can we bridge those kinds of gaps?

Re:Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

You've obviously never used Verizon DSL. Their system requires a login/password which is generated via their Windows-only software when you're setting things up. Once you have that you no longer need Windows to connect to the internet, but you do need to that once to get the system & modem set up.

Seriously. No joke.

I presume you can set that stuff up over the phone if you have a Mac or something, but that's probably non-obvious for someone who accidentally orders a Linux laptop.

And, also, Firefox cannot necessarily handle all of her "browsing needs". It's not always Firefox's fault, but there's a reason I have IE Tab set up for a handful of sites and it's not because I'm a web developer.

Re:Exactly

[Koiu Lpoi]

And, also, Firefox cannot necessarily handle all of her "browsing needs". It's not always Firefox's fault, but there's a reason I have IE Tab set up for a handful of sites and it's not because I'm a web developer.

I wonder how those Mac and Linux people even get around the web these days... Or does Safari and Konqueror fill the gap that IE leaves?
For consumer-space internet, I haven't run into an IE-only website since... well, Maplestory used to be IE only...

Unless you're running some archaic banking software that uses ActiveX (or something like it), there's simply no reason to claim that.

Re:Exactly

[Phroggy]

You've obviously never used Verizon DSL. Their system requires a login/password which is generated via their Windows-only software when you're setting things up. Once you have that you no longer need Windows to connect to the internet, but you do need to that once to get the system & modem set up.

Does anyone have more information about this? I don't live in Verizon territory, so I don't have first-hand experience. Presumably the username/password in question is for PPPOE, but I would expect them to simply tell you what it is, then have you type that into their Windows-only config program, not the other way around.

Re:Exactly

[mea37]

Ok, no factual disagreement on the basic point, that a service that requires a particular OS sucks. But I wonder how many people are grasping the real issue here...

You, and many others, when faced with a reason why this situation didn't work for a common user, focus on reasons why those issues shouldn't be issues.

Well, that's why 2009 won't be the year of Linux on the desktop. "Linux to conquer the world" is much more ambitious a goal than "Linux to conquer a made-up world in which only problems that 'should' exist do exist".

Some people go as far as to attack the user for not knowing enough, or for not handling the situation the way the poster thinks he/she would've handled it even if they didn't know what they know. Well, again, "Linux for the common user" is far more ambitious than "Linux for the common user where common user is defined to be like me".

Linux will be hindered in the consumer market as long as the typical approach is to think that the market should change to accept Linux, and not the other way around. And that's fine if that's what Linux wants to be -- but just don't act confused about why other OS's still dominate the desktop.

Re:Exactly

[internerdj]

Well the linux community's answer seems to be if we ridicule people enough they will stop being intellectually lazy and learn something, which from my perspective seems to be itself intellectually lazy.
If all us tech folks weren't afraid of even the most basic attempt at bridging the gap from technical work to actual human interaction, then there wouldn't be such a big deal about forcing people to make even the most basic comments in their code. Most of us hate to do that type of work, and the biggest problem with FOSS is that people get to volunteer for their tasks; so, the things companies have to force out of their developers and have to hire dedicated people to get done are severely underserved. The truely sad thing for adoption is the community wants to supplant Microsoft's dominance but not take actually have to deal with Microsoft's typical users.

Re:Exactly

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

- She doesn't know that OpenOffice.org can handle her needs for "Microsoft Word" just fine

I have to call you, and many, many others on this statement. Sure, OpenOffice does handle standard word documents without too much trouble. But time and again I have encountered heavily customised word documents with tick boxes, mixed colum formatting, etc, etc, which Openoffice simply cannot display with fidelity. And by fidelity, I mean make sure the danm funding form fits on one page and not bleed it over onto the second.

Sure, you may think these documents are obscure. Trouble is they aren't. They are typically, ancient Word 97 produced affairs, devised by a "self educated" whiz somewhere in the accounting department with too much time on their hands . Universities are saturated with these documents, as is any small or medium sized company that has ever had such a "whiz" in their employ. They're sort of like one of those custom Access programs written by a non-programmer that slowly grow and mutate. It suffices to say that Open Office, while it does not choke, simply cannot cope under the strain of displaying them.

The essential problem here is that people feel they NEED to use MS Word or an equivalent program for absolutely everything. I have been sent emails containing nothing but an MS Word attachment in which is contained... the "letter" I was being sent. It's crazy. If I am ever in a position where I am accepting or grading papers, or summaries, or memos, or whatever, each and every single submission will be required to be a simple TXT file. They're perfectly adequate for just about everything except diagrams, and if they need to use those they can be submitted as attachments.

- She probably wouldn't know that Firefox can handle all of her browsing needs even where another OS is specified (under most circumstances)

One word. Flash. This is not a settled issue on any Linux system to this day. Sure it can work, but not on every system. The situtation with flash in Linux closely resembles that of video drivers about five years ago, when it was still necessary in many instances to edit xfree86 conf files or the like. With the ever growing domination of youtube, a browser without guaranteed out of the box flash is seriously deficient. Not even Ubuntu has this.

Re:Exactly

[thtrgremlin]

The issue is that Windows is easy to get started with, and there isn't a lot to learn. Simple GUIs for everything, and you wouldn't know about any advanced features unless you looked them up and knew what you were doing.

Linux is about productivity first. Linux is easy to use, but not completely obvious. With the power to begin any complicated task just a click or keyword away, it can feel like being dropped into an ocean and being asked to swim. The most extreme example of this type of design where productivity is valued over obviousness or 'intuitiveness' is Blender3D. Blender is a F***ING nightmare to figure a damn thing out. I used 3D studio max and poked around and was modeling simple buildings and funny creatures in a matter of hours. Blender I was just like WTF!?! and by the time I figured out how to draw a simple cube, I gave up. Last summer, I thought I would give it another go after watching Elephant Dreams. I figured, ok, of they can do this, I must be able to do better than a box. I thought: What would be the pragmatic way of going about this. Hmm.. Read the damn documentation maybe? The first thing the documentation covered was that the GUI ia intentionally designed a very particular way and they are NOT going to change it. While it requires a lot of memorization, once you 'get it', it will enable you to model faster than ever. Despite not knowing how to do anything, the GUI didn't seem so 'stupid' anymore. If every little detail was very well thought out, then I needed to give it a chance. I jumped on youtube and did a search for "Blender tutorial". MANY results. I picked a series and followed along. While the controls were not obvious in any way, they were easy to remember and simple to use. Every few videos or so, I would try to figure something out on my own, but usually with complete failure. But continuing with the videos, each 20 minute segment was showing me whole new aspects of what could be done. I got to give credit where credit is due. super3boy did a pretty good job. The videos were a bit on the crude side, and the examples were really simple and drawn out, but considering how effective he was in assisting me with my learning, it was perfect. I even showed a friend that had never even much used a computer but to check email, and within a week we were making beautiful scenes, fun simple games, and such. Water, fireworks, explosives taking out buildings, whatever came to mind could be put together right away as the thoughts unfolded. It wasn't like having to think of one part then work through it and then think about the next part after the first part was done.

Anyway, the point is, Linux can be over whelming. I know many people are interested in Linux, but watch people who are comfortable with it, and it all just looks like magic. I have been using Linux for several years now, and I still see people do clever things that appear "magical". Maybe that is why Macs are so popular. I don't think there is anything I have ever seen done on a mac that couldn't be copied by a monkey. Maybe that is the appeal. One simple way to do certain things that people want to do with their computer that make them look cool. But while mac is much like a "choose your own adventure" novel, Linux can feel like pencil and paper, but give it a little time and energy, it is more like Harold's Purple Crayon.

I can understand that some people just want the choose your own adventure. I get that. But Linux enables your computer to be a tool, and as with any complex piece of machinery, the novice needs a teacher. Just because its complex and there is much to learn doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the machine. It means people need help. This is why I feel the Linux community is so strong. It is necessary for people to share their knowledge. It requires upstream developers to hang out in their own irc channel. It requires LOTS of third party documentation to a

Re:Exactly

[Cramer]

It's getting rarer these days, but there are still a**holes that code things that will only work in IE. And there are some regular html/javascript setups that don't work too well in "other browsers" -- vmware server for one, dell's support site for two.

Re:Exactly

[Cramer]

The thing is, your username and password don't exist until you run that crap to create it. Why there isn't a simple, pure HTML web page to set all this up is way beyond me.

Re:Exactly

[jc42]

Unfortunately Linux users have the tendency to call people idiots unless you approach them with "xyz OS desktop/OS can do this but blahblah Linux distro can't".

Actually, this has little to do with fortune or with linux. It's a fundamental feature of human psychology. The computer industry has long been plagued by it, of course, but it's much more general. The best approach is to just the above as the best approach.

Thus, back in the 1980s, when I first got onto unix systems and faced the problem known as "emacs vs. vi", I found the same thing. If I asked in any forum "How do you do task T with editor E?", the answer inevitably was of the form "WTF? RTFM, n00b!"

But I quickly learned that the proper approach was to phrase the question as a negative statement: "Hey guys, emacs can do T, but vi can't." This would almost always be answered by one or more explanations of exactly how to do it in vi. Interchange "emacs" and "vi" to learn about doing T in emacs. Sometimes they would insult me, too, but I learned to dig the facts out of the insults and go on my way. Yes, I learned the basic mechanics of both editors from smallish manuals. But the real learning was done by claiming that an editor couldn't do something, and waiting for the experts to show what a dummy I was.

I did eventually settle on vi, mostly because I found myself doing a lot of work on machines that were borked somehow, or were on the other end of a semi-sane network link that ate control characters, or whatever. I'd make the claim that "Emacs/vi can't be used unless you have a totally sane link to a totally sane system". The vi experts responded by explaining things like the "ex" interface and other tricks that made it usable in most cases. They also suggested learning "ed" and "sed" for extreme failure situations, but I'd already done that. OTOH, the emacs experts never answered such charges, telling me that emacs really wasn't usable on a damaged system. So I went with vi, while envying the folks that never had to deal with recovering a brain-damaged system or negotiating with comm gadgets that ate control characters.

So maybe our tactic should be to teach people to approach linux experts with the "Linux can't do T" sort of charge. Don't ask the linux experts how to do T; challenge them to teach a dummy like you that linux can do task T. This will also help greatly with getting info about Windows, of course, but that's probably not what most readers here want to do. I've also found that this tactic does wonders with getting Mac fanboys to loosen up, stop chanting "It Just Works!", and explain how to get the little things to do the job right.

Claiming that "System S can't do task T" is a general tactic that the public should know about when dealing with any tech experts. If we educate people about it, it might go a long way toward getting them on our side by making their computers do what they want.

My current favorite claim is that linux software can't print UTF-8-encoded text with stuff like Arabic or Chinese text. I suspect that this probably isn't true, because linux is widely used in Asia. But so far, it seems true, because about all I've found is assertions that it's possible, without any coherent explanation of how people (in Asia?) are doing it. (I've also collected a list of email addresses of people around the world saying that if I find a good answer, I should forward a copy to them. ;-)

(The Mac crowd also doesn't answer this charge, either, so apparently Macs can't print UTF-8 text, either. I'd be happy to be proved an idiot here ...)

Re:Exactly

[johnmat]

It is easy without Windows - I just went through this with a Verizon DSL install. When I called and told them I was installing from a Mac, they talked me through logging directly into the modem from Safari, and setting it up through its web interface. No Windows required! (so is that the chicken, or the egg?)

Re:Exactly

[Benzido]

I think part of the problem is the boneheaded decision to call it 'OpenOffice.org'. In an attempt to make it sound all web-capable and 2.0, it makes regular users think it's a website rather than an office suite.

Re:Exactly

[JavaHead85]

flash in Linux closely resembles that of video drivers about five years ago

Um No. Not only has flash progessed in leaps and bounds on the Linux front, Linux is ahead supporting 64 bit Flash. Windows is playing catch-up here not Linux http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

Re:Humor? Entertainment?

[gblackwo]

There is a difference.

This woman didn't want to try to use it, she got stuck with it on accident and then failed to make use of it. A few google searches by her would have revealed at least how to use Word or Open Office. And has it been shown that she really has a verizon card?- or does she just think she needs the magic cd that came with her cable modem?

Re:Expected

[sucker_muts]

Part of the problem is that she did not understand it's possible to configure internet access without that Verizon cdrom, and she could easily work with OpenOffice instead of Word. Verizon even offered to send a technician to help with the connection, and the school said it has no problems with people using different software when following their couses.

Too bad the woman did not look for answers but simply blamed Dell instead out of ignorance. :(

Re:Until the point at Windows doesn't "just work"

[Telvin_3d]

If the computer doesn't do what she needs it to do in the first place, why does better security matter? She could put a rock on the desk, call it a computer and be just as productive and free from computer viruses.

Re:In Other News...

[Anonymous Coward]

No...There is a Wisconsin WOMAN. This WOMAN has Linux on a laptop. This WOMAN needs help. Come on guys, how big an opening do you need?!?

Re:Expected

[Lulfas]

But there is no reason for a normal person to find some ad-hoc work around to the software not working on an OS they have no special love for. Most people don't care what OS they have, and they aren't going to bend over backwards like you often have to do in a *nix system to run what everyone expects you to be able to run. In most people's minds, Office = MS. They aren't going to go looking for random alternatives just because they are out there. That isn't the way people work. The only reason to ever look for an alternative is when it DOESN'T work.

Re:Humor? Entertainment?

[MightyYar]

This woman is beyond stupid, though. She dropped out of school because she couldn't figure out how to make her computer work. And then, apparently, her solution to this life crisis wasn't to ask someone knowledgeable about computers - it was to call the local news!

So let me get this straight...

[thesolo]

She's enrolling at the Madison Area Technical College, and couldn't be bothered to read the specs on a laptop she ordered? Sorry, made me chuckle. It's not as though Dell hides what OS comes with each laptop!

Kidding aside, Dell should have just allowed her to return it for a Windows model if that's what she wanted. She clearly did not have the technical prowess to figure out how to configure her internet access without the walkthrough software.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[tompaulco]

Give me a break. The average person doesn't know what an OS is, so wouldn't be any more surprised finding the word Ubuntu in there than they would to find the word SATA. To the masses, a PC is a PC, and they probably expect when ordering something from Dell that it will be ready for them to plug in and it works. Why? Because that is the way it has been for 20 years. Now, we have manufacturers shipping linux on PCs to unsuspecting customers and not surprisingly, they can't figure out how to make it work. I personally don't think we need everyone who is going to have a PC be smart enough to run linux. Maybe linux needs to be simple enough that anybody that owns a PC can use it. But that is not necessary, because we have Windows.

Is her name John Dvorak?

[jollyreaper]

This sounds like one of his troll articles.

Re:Humor? Entertainment?

[Anonymous Coward]

Her lack of computer finesse isn't the funny thing here for me. I saw the newscast on this. She had two problems: She didn't have MS Office, and her Verizon internet disc tried to run it's startup.exe. She just has to save her papers in .doc format, and have a Verizon tech crew come out and fix her internet. It took the news anchorman two (2) phone calls to fix this for her.. so what attempt is there to mock? She probably just slacked off for her classes and used Dell as as excuse.

Re:Expected

[capnkr]

No, this is the sort of thing which makes "Idiocracy" seem to be an insightful and predictive documentary...

Re:it figures,

[Todd Fisher]

Or Forrest Gump's line: Lieutenant Dannnn! Ice Cream!

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

A girl couldn't finish her paper because her pc ate it and went beep beep beep beeep.

it was a really good paper.

Newsflash!

[Qbertino]

Newsflash: Online student discovers that basic brain functions are required to run and operate a computer. Film at eleven.

Re:Expected

[Cajun Hell]

in this case, Windows "just works."

Yep, downloads and executes (or autoloads from freshly inserted disk) and installs malware without all that pesky save-as, chmod +x crap.

C'mon, the article explicitly says she wants internet access. You've got to be insane to give Windows to a "normal person" if you know they're going to be connected to the internet, precisely because of the "dangerous stuff 'just works'" problem. These three things just don't go together: 1) Windows 2) networks 3) computer novices. Change any 1 and you can have a working system, but all 3 together are lethal.

Her Verizon High-Speed Internet CD won't load, so she can't access the internet.

Ubuntu can't network out-of-the-box, and needs a Verizon CD? Whoa!

She also can't install Microsoft Word, which she says is a requirement for MATC's online classes. .. MATC also says it promises to accept any of Schubert's papers or class documents using whatever software she has installed.

Sounds like somebody doesn't have their story straight. FUD should be consistent within an article if you want people to believe it.

Re:Expected

[PalmKiller]

Verizon is one issue here, their tech support can and should support her connecting via any os, she should be suing them if anyone. Open office would suffice for the papers, someone should just help her out. Hey, did she try the geek squad (/me ducks). But really, pay a lawyer to sue people when she could just use the money to pay for someone to support her, shes just in it for the money, or she is incredibly lost. Thats the american way though, throw a bunch of money at a lawyer, rather than look for a solution to the problem.

College isn't for everyone..

[RagingFuryBlack]

Isn't the whole college experience suppose to teach us critical thinking and problem solving skills to use in real life? This woman had a problem and instead of attempting to fix it, she complained bitched and gave up. Its a shame that the media would cover such a story. This story is IMO at least, less about *nix and more about how some woman is making herself look infinitely stupid by not taking care to solve her own problems.

Re:Humor? Entertainment?

[elrous0]

We geeks tend to live in a bit of an echo chamber and so we can lose perspective on just how ignorant and computer illiterate the average citizen is. Just the response "A few google searches by her would have revealed..." is just one example. There are a LOT of people (probably the *majority* of people) out there who have no idea what a "google search" is. Most of the people that I work with (and these are college-educated people, mind you), don't know what a browser is (they refer to Internet Explorer as "the internet"). And no, I'm not joking (I wish I was).

Its not Ubuntu's fault

[reeeh2000]

While DELL should have fixed the problem, don't blame Ubuntu. Verizon purposely designs its phones to be unusable with Linux. Verizon has a track record of locking its phones. For example, the Blackberry's built in GPS is inaccessible so that Verizon can charge to use its triangulation based navigation system.

As for the classes, the developers of the online software have an obligation to make it work on as many systems as possible. While Linux developers must continue to work towards compatibility with other systems, the companies behind them must work with us as well.

Finally, before anyone goes calling this woman idiotic for this compliant, we should make an offer to teach her about the technology and how to use non-Linux software through applications such as Wine.

Re:Expected

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe it or not, our linux enthusiasts here are as enthusiastic as many slashdot posters.

That she needs and deserves Windows probably escaped the rep...

Re:When can my mom use Linux?

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

I don't know about *your* mom, but my 65-ish year old parents Adapted from Windows 2000 to CentOS 5.2 (the desktop version) + OpenOffice 3 in about a day. I just needed about 20-30 minutes of time to show them the little differences in using their new GUI.

Their first comment? "Wow, this is pretty fast. Now we don't have to spend a grand on a new computer. Thanks!" (on a fairly old 2ghz P4 box with 512mb RAM and Matrox...remember them?...video card)

There is hope.

Cheers,

sales and tech support really dropped the ball

[swanriversean]

She actually realized she had made a mistake before the computer was shipped, and called Dell. But the rep she spoke to convinced her to stick with Ubuntu anyway. It appears that he didn't suggest one of the support packages that Dell offers for their Ubuntu machines.

Another missed part of the story is that Verizon mustn't have done anything to help her before this became news (given my experience with big ISPs they don't give much help if you're using Linux, so I assume she called).

While it isn't exactly fair to expect companies to bend over backwards to help customers with what they perceive to be "exotic" setups, I wonder why, after all these years, they don't at least have a list of local LUGs to which they could direct Linux users. Had someone at least got her in touch with them, I bet the problems could have been resolved.

Warranty

[spicyed]

I don't understand why changing software on your computer would violate the warranty on your hardware.

Man claims Porsche kept him from getting laid

[meist3r]

After the man had purchased a brand new Porsche the day before he hooked up with a random floozy in a club and wanted to give her a ride home, where he whould then continue to ride and then go home. His attempt was brought to a quick and nagging halt when he discovered the hole for the ignition key was mounted on the left side of the steering column where his newly found friend couldn't stay aroused by looking at his Porsche keychain dangling from the wheel.

He asked Porsche to install the ignition the other way around but was talked out of it given the decades old tradition of left mounted ignition in Porsche vehicles. He refused to handle the key with the left hand and subsequently broke his elbow during the attempt of operating it with his right.

His lawyer announced today that he was going to sue Porsche and the Left-Handers Society of America for building such a highly inconvenient car and damages amounting to 15.0000 US dollars and two Apple-tinis.


In other news: Stupid woman saves money with alternative open operating system - Misses Online Strip Class

Re:Humor? Entertainment?

[TheLinuxSRC]

And yet here is a normal person, trying to use it, and finding it frustrating and causing her problems, and people mock her attempt.

According to the story she somehow accidentally ordered the laptop with Ubuntu. I am not sure how she managed that because I have to *search* Dell's site to find their Linux offerings, but I digress and that is irrelevant anyway.

What is relevant is that she received a laptop configured in a manner she was unfamiliar with. She should have just returned the laptop if it was sent this way in error. My point is, she didn't attempt to use it (Ubuntu) in any sort of meaningful way. She *assumed* the laptop had Windows installed. She is familiar with Windows. She attempted running a disk that requires Windows and then looked for the MS Office icons and couldn't find them and then she gave up. Again, if what she ordered was a Windows machine, the blame falls squarely on Dell and Dell should make it right. If she did order the laptop with Ubuntu and ignored all of the warnings about how this order does not have Windows and Windows software will not run on Linux etc.... then the blame is fully hers.

This has nothing to do with Windows vs. Linux as she never made a conscious choice to use Linux. She also didn't make much effort in using Ubuntu. In fact, if she has to miss *two* semesters of school because of this, it screams to me that she was looking for a reason to not go to school and this is the perfect excuse in her mind.

Thank you for your suggestion

[DragonHawk]

"Dell, if someone calls and says they got a Ubuntu computer by mistake, just have them ship it back. "

We'll get right on that.

Sincerely,

All of Dell (we all read Slashdot, but just share this one account)

This is likely to be MS astroturfing/fake news

[Qbertino]

I just posted a witty reply to this story. Reading TFA again it occured to me that this is most likely MS fake news and/or astroturfing. It requires quite a few clicks to actually customize a Laptop at Dell and have it come with Ubuntu rather than some MS Windows variant.
I'd say this might very well be fake news.

Re:Expected

[mewshi_nya]

You can still submit things in Doc using OO.o. Or do you never bother to check these things? And, frankly, I would rather have someone who knows how to think, "What would this be called on this system?" than "Here's what it's called on this old system. OH SHIT! I CAN'T FIND IT ON THE NEW ONE! HELP!!"

Re:Expected

[Directrix1]

Windows requires just as much tinkering as Linux, just in different ways.

Semantics Problem, Actually

[mfh]

I see this as mostly a semantics problem. The prof, or person who wrote the syllabus meant something general but said something specific. They likely wrote that students require MS Office for the course(s). What they mean by this is that the students need a word processor and a spreadsheet, possibly power point.

Also it needs to be said that it's against ethical standards for a school to require products of a particular brand name, as long as competing products are sufficient.

I must also add that if you are a student, you could consider ignoring standards set by your prof or dept, if they don't make sense. Many of those standards were written more than ten years ago. Not only that, you are in a competitive setting and you are less competitive if you are confining yourself, using the same generic tools as everyone else in your class.

Of course if MSFT products are BETTER somehow than what you can get, then it would be advised to use them.

I would always opt for students to use what suits them best, rather than what is trendy or required.

The other side of the coin is that Dell wants to save money on MSFT license fees, so they push free OS to keep their costs down. It's not really putting the customer first if the customer feels really cheated by it.

In this particular case, however, I have no idea why Open Office wouldn't suffice, or why the school wouldn't help the student get connected to the internet just reflects poorly on their customer service standards, IMHO.

Re:Expected

[mark72005]

Don't they include OpenOffice with these?

If the Dell support rep could have just given her two or three helpful tips, she could have probably been fine. OpenOffice is a perfect replacement for Word. I don't know about her Verizon situation, but I'm sure there is a workaround for that.

The problem is, as I've been flamed for before, Linux is still nowhere near the point where a non-techie will consider adopting it. Although it's much better than it was even a few years ago, it's still not an idiot-friendly OS where things 'just work', compared to what people are used to.

Re:Expected

[hattig]

The shame is that the education should be concentrating on how to achieve results via theory, not on a specific tool. Teaching, not Training.

You then apply the theory to the tool you are using, rather than know you have to hit the icon that looks like paper with a + on it, and a squiggle, on the third toolbar.

This is doubly more relevant because of Office 2007 which screwed up the user interface big time.

So what if the document is submitted in OpenOffice Word format? What matters is that the person applied the tool features correctly. If it isn't a course related to using office software, then it matters even less.

She's not college material.

[tjstork]

You know, I understand her point from the inconvenience, but in the larger sense of the word, I thought college was partially a test in determination and overcoming adversity. Not everything goes right when in school and those who make it through it overcome it, and those who do not, don't.

I know a guy who is getting his degree despite missing a finger and the use of an eye compliments of a tour in Iraq, all while trying to support a wife and son. I would think -he- has some problems to overcome.

  woman has a computer that's not what she expects? I would suggest that, if she has a paper due, get on the internet, find out what she has, learn quickly, and get something out the door. She might, well, learn something, and I thought that was what college was for!

Re:Expected

[mark72005]

There's no way you can expect an average user to figure out how to compile drivers or even use wine to make this work.

It's her fault partially for not asking the right questions beforehand, but it's Dell's fault for not making sure she understood what she was getting and not supporting her after the fact.

Re:Humor? Entertainment?

[morgan_greywolf]

Thank you. Rather than arguing about saying "Linux isn't for everyone" can we all just agree that in this case "college isn't for everyone?"

Thanks.

Valid yet Stupid

[whisper_jeff]

While she may have a valid concern based on ignorance - she had problems using Ubuntu because she just didn't know how and that's something slashdotters should probably take seriously if they want people to adopt Ubuntu (or some other distro) - I do find her blaming Dell to be idiotic. It's one of the big problems we have with today's society-at-large. Rather than admit something might be one's own shortcoming ("I don't know what I'm doing with Ubuntu...") people try to find someone else to blame. It's all about where can I point the finger that isn't at me? So stupid.

Re:Valid yet Stupid

[pandrijeczko]

she had problems using Ubuntu because she just didn't know how and that's something slashdotters should probably take seriously if they want people to adopt Ubuntu (or some other distro)

I really don't like this statement - why would a normal Linux user "want" everyone else to start using it?

In my circle of friends & family, I'm the "freebie" PC support guy & I've pretty much constantly got someone's PC in my house waiting to be upgraded or repaired. And if, as they usually do, hand me a PC with Windows XP on it then, surprisingly, they get it returned with Windows XP on it, despite the fact I use Linux more than Windows these days.

To be entirely honest with you, I would much rather the Windows people I support either pay for licensed copies of software they want to use or install an Open Source alternative on Windows rather than downloading and installing trojan-ridden pirated software from the P2P networks - it really is getting to the stage, within my circle, where I am going to start refusing to fix anyone's PC where they've installed pirated software...

I also quite like Windows XP and decided from the outset I wouldn't like or want anything to do with Vista. Yet I still spent 4 hours on Boxing Day (December 26th to those not in the UK) sorting out a neighbour's new Vista laptop for wireless connectivity that turned out to be a configuration issue that would have taken minutes to resolve in XP.

So please remember that very few of us Linux people are zealots and, because we have the know-how to use Linux then we probably also know a lot about Windows & PCs in general. That in turn means a lot of inexperienced Windows users get a lot of free tech support out of us - and whilst I personally wouldn't touch Vista with a bargepole, it doesn't mean I won't help someone fix a problem with it if they ask me to.

Dell did us a public service

[MikeRT]

This chick obviously had no business being in college for several good reasons:

1) She couldn't even see fit to double or triple check a $1,100 order for a laptop to make sure it was what she wanted. For most of us, that's blatant financial irresponsibility.

2) She didn't have the wherewithal to get someone to put Windows on for her when she realized she just couldn't handle Ubuntu. Again, a sign of irresponsibility. Arguing that her ignorance, not laziness, was a factor here is like arguing that someone with car problems doesn't deserve criticism for not seeking out a mechanic.

3) She canceled 2 semesters of college over this.

I'd say Dell probably saved the tax payers money, since she'd probably end up as some 6 year Art History major whose "education" is funded by tax payers. Hopefully no business will hire her for any important job either, since she is precisely the opposite of what most businesses mean when they say they want a "self-starter."

Re:Dell did us a public service

[LingNoi]

Your analogy fails because under said analogy, she went to the mechanic who told her everything was fine and not to worry about it.

and this is where your analogy fails because there was nothing wrong with her computer. You're going under the general assumption that something is wrong or fails to complete the tasks she needs it to do.

By reading the article you'll see that she is happily using her new ubuntu machine now she knows how it works.

Re:Expected

[TheSovereign]

I don't agree. Literally anyone who had even a slight clue about her predicament would have been able to load windows on the system. contrary to the article this doesn't void your dell guarantee. This person chose to leave school instead of getting her problem fixed, which, in my opinion is simply an excuse for her mental shortcomings, then again if she were intelligent in the least she could have gotten her internet connection to work in the first place.

Re:Humor? Entertainment?

[Soruk]

A few google searches by her...

How would she do that if she doesn't know how to connect?

Re:Until the point at Windows doesn't "just work"

[Viol8]

The computer did do what she wanted - it would connect to the internet and process Word documents. She was just too stupid to know how to plug in an ethernet cable or double click on a .doc

Re:Expected

[Nebu]

maybe we just can't expect everyone to finish college, some people are just not bright. serioulsy, do you want this person to be a doctor or manage your finances if she can't be bothered to click on the "network" icon in the top right corner of the screen? what kind of problem solving skills does she have.

IMHO, knowing enough about computers to set up a network (even with OS guidance) is not strongly correlated with medical or financial advisory skills.

For all I care, the doctor/financial advisor can be a luddite, using pen and paper for all his/her records, as long as they do the job well.

Re:Expected

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I just wonder how she ended up ordering an Ubuntu box. Dell doesn't store them at the bottom of the filing cabinet in the disused room marked "beware of the leopard" anymore; but I've never once been led astray, or even seen a link that might lead me astray, on Dell's ordering pages.

Re:Expected

[SBrach]

What's the replacement for VZAccess?

Re:Expected

[cashman73]

I attended the same school as this chick, and 90% of my syllabuses said that works *must* be submitted in Microsoft Word format.

And how much do you want to bet that the school complains about students constantly submitting things in .docx format and not being able to read it, because, "it's not the MS Word DOCs I've seen before"?

Re:Expected

[agrounds]

My wife is taking an online teacher certification course right now. She uses a Mac as her primary computer. The online coursework is completely unaccessible without Internet Explorer. We've tried Safari, Chrome, and of course Firefox to no avail. You have to have IE. All coursework must be submitted as Excel or Word. This is non-negotiable. We know this because we tried since she uses OpenOffice normally.

No, saving as an MS Office document does NOT preserve OOo's document formatting like it should.

Consequently, she has to use my gaming Windows machine for her school work.
The reality of it all is that for some things you truly do need Windows because that is what the company you are working with expect. Calling and whining to the company that runs the online certification program does absolutely nothing, and all students are expected to comply with this because that is how the program works.

We can blame the woman in this story for not pulling out the man pages, searching google extensively, working things on command-line, etc... or we can accept that normal, average people should not have to do these things for a mature operating system. They expect things to work. She is not wrong for this.

It's a plant

[Anonymous Coward]

1) You can't "accidentally" find an Ubuntu Dell.

2) Dell support would NEVER say "you don't want windows, Ubuntu works better for you".

3) She took FIVE MONTHS to complain

It's a fake.

Re:It's a plant

[jellomizer]

You have never dealt with Dell Before have you.

Dell does make shipping mistakes giving the wrong computer to the wrong person.

Or when ordering you could go I don't want Vista, what else would work with my PC. (Some new PCs do not run XP well, but runs Linux OK)

Dell may not say that but the guy at the other end of the line might, If he is Linux Zealot and cant bare to watch someone switch back, he personally may pressure her to stay with Linux.

5 Months is quite possible if it really isn't that high on your priority. Call tech support they give you a vague response. Mess with it a little once a week. Get fed up and call again after a month or so. Some people do try and hate calling tech support especially if they were rude to them.

Nothing seems that far out of reality.

Re:It's a plant

[BarryJacobsen]

1) You can't "accidentally" find an Ubuntu Dell.

2) Dell support would NEVER say "you don't want windows, Ubuntu works better for you".

3) She took FIVE MONTHS to complain

It's a fake.

It's not so much a fake as a woman rationalizing her decision to drop out of college - "It's not my fault I couldn't make it, I got a bad computer!"

Re:When can my mom use Linux?

[meist3r]

With people still asking that old inappropriated question it's no wonder there's not more interest. How many people that never worked a computer before did you sit in front of a Windows machine and they did everything rightaway? Correct: None! Or even more correctly: None more than with a Linux (here Ubuntu) GNOME desktop.

You don't have to compile software anymore (at least everything I normally use comes from the repositories or in pre-compiled binaries). Know how to use a .exe file? You almost know how to use a .deb file! I do compile stuff because I understand how it works but I don't HAVE to as you claim.

Configuration files disappear? What idiocy is this? So you want a huge cluttered registry system like Windows has that you have to setup all over again if you have to re-install the system? Something that will destroy your system if it get's even slightly messed up? I much prefer the "per-application / stored in your home folder" configuration because that's WAY easier to migrate from one system to another and in case I do have to reinstall the system I can get my settings running in no time. And even if one app breaks the configuration I can still solely remove that ONE SINGLE configuration file w/o compromising my entire system.

When was the last time you tried a distro like Ubuntu? You can't possibly be talking about 8.10 because that doesn't need any command line, compiling, terminal stuff to run at all. And gimme a fucking break "consistent modern UI"? What like Vista? Where half of the features won't work if your graphics card has been manufactured on a Tuesday and the interface is the very same as in Win95 only with a glossy skin? Go Fuck off. You clearly have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. GNOME isn't uglier than Windows XP or Vista in the "classic" mode and Compiz beats the hell out of Aero any time of the day. What is that? You can't run Compiz without taking care of special hardware and software requirements? Now guess what: Same goes for anything below Ultimate and Aero. No offense but the "modern UI" argument is for pussies and Apple users. Why does Miss "Fancy Miss MacOnline-Classes /Save Money buying a computer" need an advanced UI if she doesn't even understand that something doesn't have to be called "Word" to do text processing.

Is Linux for Geeks and Devs: Sure, why not? All the development tools are free. So why not use them. Why should I buy the same tools for a Windows platform?

Is it for everyone? If you explain the system to them the first time they use it (just like you did when they started with Windows but you did that sooo often you don't even remember).

Is it for Geeks? What today actually ISN'T for Geeks? And btw. since when is that still a term anyone uses derogatorily? I thought Geeks where the guys that make all the stuff happen whereas the Jocks and Assholes just brag about their trophies and beat up Geeks to get shit done.

Re:Expected

[hardburn]

It's a local tech college. They're pretty good as local tech colleges go, but they're as Microsoft-centric as anywhere else.

Long ago, I served time on the help desk at the library there. Mac OSX was still relatively new, and the library had gotten some shiny new Macs in with OSX preinstalled (of course, PCs outnumbered Macs about 10:1). For some reason, all of them were reinstalled with OS 9 a few days after they came in. One of our regular Mac users was very irate at us, but of course us help desk folks had nothing to do with it.

Re:Expected

[NeilTheStupidHead]

At the tech school I recently graduated from, a course on writing reports had a graded "Microsoft Office requirements" component on every piece of written work, and required electronic submission so the instructor could verify that the desired formatting was being done properly instead of just being fudged.

I did every report and presentation in OpenOffice and saved MS Word and Power Point compatible versions of my files when it came time to submit my work. The instructors never knew the difference and I got the highest mark in the class.

Personally, I've been trying out various Linux distros for the past 10 years. I never really found any to be a suitable replacement for Windows on any of my computers until I got my hands on Hardy. My first Hardy install onto a Windows pre-loaded Dell laptop went as smoothly and as quickly as I've ever had an OS install (excepting maybe MSDOS but that hardly counts). The only hardware that didn't work immediately after the install was the wireless card, but ndiswrapper and Wifi-radar quickly solved that.

Re:it figures,

[meist3r]

Or Bill Engvall: "Here's your sign"

FUD

[jsimon12]

I am a little disappointed this was given the greenlight as it is simply FUD and/or a Microsoft viral marketing ad.

The woman claims she had to drop the semester because she couldn't get on the Internet, which has to be a complete cop out. Since as a student she could just very cheaply buy the Windows OS she needed or just use the computers in the computer lab at her school.

Re:Humor? Entertainment?

[sxltrex]

She dropped out of school because she couldn't figure out how to make her computer work.

Dude, it's even better than that. She dropped out of technical college because she couldn't figure out how to make her computer work.

Re:Expected

[agrounds]

Another lying Micro$hill who avoids the obvious. OOo can read and save in .doc format.

Ignoring the mean-spirited zealotness of this post, I will point out that saving OOo documents in MS Office format does not properly conserve all document formatting. I have found this to be true time and time again for word processing documents that have real formatting and inserted tables and graphics.

Re:Expected

[Keeper Of Keys]

Although it's much better than it was even a few years ago, it's still not an idiot-friendly OS where things 'just work'

Judging by the number of support calls I get from friends, nor is Windows.

Car metaphor!

[mcsqueak]

Ubuntu kept this women from her online classes the same way trying to fill a petrol car with diesel would keep someone else from attending a normal lecture... USER ERROR.

I'm sick of this Linux attitude

[HockeyPuck]

I'm sick of the linux communities' attitude that she should have known linux was "internet capable" right out of the box; or that she could have opened up a document in OpenOffice. I think the community forgets that for the majority of internet users, they started out by getting a CD in the mail (AOL/Compuserve/Prodigy/Earthlink/Mindspring whatever) and that launched an application which had an integrated browser/email/news/stocks client. So she treated her internet access like a black box; big deal. Most people treat their cars like black boxes as well.

Someone handed her a Microsoft Word document; why should we blame her if she looked on her computer and *GASP* didn't see Microsoft Word. Is it possible that just maybe, he classes said as a requirement you needed MSWord for the class materials? Maybe there are spreadsheets that are handed out that have tons of formulas and macros in them; is the instructor going to worry about OO macro compatibility. No, and neither should she.

Dell should be ashamed for not allowing her computer to be returned, but the linux community should be ashamed as well. For assuming that all computer users are part IT Staff. Maybe we should expect the average /. user to be able to sit down at a 3270 terminal and configure the IOCDS or perform a datamigration with DFSMS on my zSeries. I mean, it's just a computer right, it must run rsync....

Just like with cars, some people are mechanics, some people just change oil and filters and others just drive the car. It's a shame the linux community can't understand the same thing about computers.

Re:I'm sick of this Linux attitude

[secretcurse]

I'm sorry, but I'm of the opinion that people should be obligated to learn a little bit about the tools they use. I believe if you own a car, you should know how to do simple things like checking fluid levels, changing oil, and changing a flat. Now, some people are going to choose to pay someone else to do those things and that's fine, but I think if you operate a car you should at least know a few basic things about it. The same holds for computers. I just don't have pity for someone that isn't going to learn enough about their computer to be able to hook it up to their cable or dsl modem and search out basic troubleshooting problems using Google. This girl wanted to save a few bucks by not paying the Microsoft tax and now she's mad because she didn't look into the situation enough to realize that she might not be able to use it with her school's online programs. Why the fuck wasn't she smart enough to call the school's IT department and work with them on finding a computer that would do everything she needs for her online classes? I'm sure any school is going to be more than happy to help an online student pick out a laptop...

Re:I'm sick of this Linux attitude

[secretcurse]

Well, yes. None of those things are hard to do basic maintenance on (besides the ATM machine, but I unfortunately don't own any of those). My dad gave me his copy of the Bob Vila home improvement library from Craftsman/Sears from the 70s that goes through fixing basically anything in the house. It used to be expected that a homeowner could take basic care of their house. A person with even marginal intelligence should be able to handle basic troubleshooting and maintenance for a house, car, or computer. If they have some curiousity and drive, they can get into intermediate troubleshooting and maintenance, or even upgrades. Nobody will be an expert at everything, but I think people should know a little bit about the things they use every day.

Re:Expected

[ShieldW0lf]

The problem is, as I've been flamed for before, Linux is still nowhere near the point where a non-techie will consider adopting it. Although it's much better than it was even a few years ago, it's still not an idiot-friendly OS where things 'just work', compared to what people are used to.

My 8 year old uses it just fine.

The woman is an airhead. Airheads regularly fail to critically examine what they're doing, then blame others for their lack of success. It's a personality flaw, and nothing anyone does is going to provide anything more than a very temporary fix. So, attempting to solve the problems of people like this woman by changing the operating system are doomed to failure.

Re:Expected

[MacColossus]

I have used Verizon wireless usb adapters on my Mac without VZaccess. I just plugged it in and it worked. My understanding is Linux has similar drivers available and it just works on there as well. VZaccess is not required.

Re:Expected

[be951]

That's called bait and switch, and it's a swindle.

Um, no. Nothing here suggests that she ordered a Windows machine and got Ubuntu instead. She either didn't pay close enough attention, or did not understand enough about computers to know the difference. That's not a swindle. That's user error.

Re:Expected

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you, I'm eating.

Re:Until the point at Windows doesn't "just work"

[Shikaku]

Wine has serious compatibility issues with most viruses. They should fix this.

Re:In Other News...

[cashman73]

I was just getting ready to post the same thing myself. Geez -- you slashdotters really are dense! No wonder there's so many jokes about slashdotters not being able to find girlfriends,... ;-)

Re:Expected

[bhtooefr]

Vista's highly annoying level of UAC was actually designed in an annoying manner on purpose, to try to get users to complain to the developers.

However, "Publisher: Microsoft Corporation" means... yeah, it backfired. :P

Re:Expected

[Maxo-Texas]

Not in my experience (yet).

Windows is still easier.

However, linux has made a lot of progress in my eyes in the last 24 months.

Ubuntu is having a huge effect in this area. There is finally a stable team doing polishing.
Linux needed polishing. It needed to look prettier (Red Hat did some nice stuff in this area too as I recall).

Now- what *should* have happened was that she turned on her computer and it said, "Do you want to set up the internet?"

When she clicked "yes", it should have showed pictures about plugging in the wires (2 hours work to set up), with a little script (maybe 16 hours?) that checks for a router and things like that. It asks her about her internet provider's DNS service but if she does not know it, then it points her at one of the free open dns services (being polite about it to her).

It tests the connection and then asks about other common things a new user might want to do (like word processing) and suggests the major candidates- installing the one she selects from a list.

This is probably less than a month's work to write. But it hasn't been done yet. It needs to be done. There needs to be an extremely friendly interview/installation process for linux to take it to the next level.

It can start off with "Are you new to Linux?" as a text prompt and take it from there. Expert users would go down a different path.

Re:Expected

[C18H27NO3]

I use a Verizon 3G wireless usb on my Ubuntu box and it couldn't be simpler.
Run gnome-ppp and enter the following in respective fields:

Username: phone_num@vzw3g.com
Password: vzw
Phone #: #777
Device: /dev/ACM0
Type: USB

Click 'Connect'
That's all there is to it.

There is no need for having Windows installed for her to get on teh intarwebs and OO.org suite is a reasonable alternative to Office.
(Off to rtfa, now)

Re:Expected

[Ohio Calvinist]

If someone is willing to pay $20/unit (community college) to $100-200/unit (public university) and hundreds of dollars for books, she could have either forked up the $90 or so bucks they charge for Windows, taken it somewhere and let them do it, or taken CIS 100 "Intro to the Internet" or CIS 101 "Computer Applications" and figured how to do it herself. With all the money it costs to attend school at some of the most affordable colleges, getting her computer fixed (even though it didn't need "fixing") is a drop in the bucket. Granted, I know some folks are pretty against the wall financially, but she should have developed better problem solving and critical thinking skills than what she obviously has not seemed to developed, well before university.

Re:Expected

[jbolden]

Most likely she asked questions like "can I do papers in Ubuntu" and they told her how.

Dell is making a play to be a major Ubuntu reseller on Netbooks. Their tech support has to learn how to provide end user support for Ubuntu. Not just say "use windows".

And frankly this story doesn't smell right to me.

Re:Expected

[jbolden]

192.168.0.1:80

Re:Humor? Entertainment?

[meist3r]

And yet here is a normal person, trying to use it, and finding it frustrating and causing her problems, and people mock her attempt.

"Normal" is a very flexible definition depending on whoever sets the boundaries between normal and stupid. In my opinion a very stupid woman spoke to a very stupid Dell rep who wasn't able to tell her how to start OpenOffice (for fucks sake Applications/Office/Writer -how hard is that?) and relied on very stupid Verizon that can't produce an Ubuntu Linux installer for their silly software package.

I had a similar problem with my sister-in-law. Gave them a Ubuntu machine and she kept trying to install some ISPs network setup disc. Eventually I went over to their house and got the network running with half a dozen clicks by reading the (incredibly stupid) manual section that was about half a page long with pictures. She didn't even bother to read beyond section 1. Install software ... section 2 would have said "Set up without disc like this:"

THAT is the problem, not that people can't use Linux ... they want to be so stupid that they simply won't be able to. Anyone should be able to read, it's your responsibility as owner of the fucking machine to understand at least a bit of how it works. It's this "I don't get the first page in the book so I stop reading" attitude. If you don't WANT to do gain that knowledge you will have these kinds of silly idiot problems all the way. So "I am stupid" and "I don't want to know" are two different things and significant ones indeed. Sometimes a book starts making sense only after you've read it even without knowing what the first couple pages meant.

Re:Expected

[deraj123]

contrary to the article this doesn't void your dell guarantee.

It is not unheard of that Dell will attempt to tell you that loading a different operating system voids your warranty.

We spent a few weeks back in October getting my brother-in-law's laptop repaired under warranty, and it took a letter to the Better Business Bureau to convince Dell that installing Ubuntu on a laptop that originally came with Windows did not void the warranty. (yes, the letter actually had an effect...Dell became extremely cooperative after that)

I should add that I'm not apologizing for the woman, but, given that she knows as little as she does, not doing something that the manufacturer tells you will void your warranty is probably a good decision.

Re:Expected

[KasperMeerts]

Gawd, not this again.

Then tell me what does not Just Work. If you're so daft that you can't even figure out to clock on Applications->Office->Word processor, then you should consider an elementary computer class, with no matter which OS. Even OS X is harder, you have to navigate the Dock first.

Remember, this is not someone who installed Ubuntu, Dell did that for her.

Re:Expected

[websitebroke]

The answer to the Verizon situation is to call up customer support and get the PPP username and password and enter it into your router manually. Since the Verizon installation CD has a whole shitload of flash presentations explaining the difference between a power cord, phone cord and ethernet cord that need to be skipped through by clicking the mouse a million times, the pain of being on the phone with customer support is about the same. The actual entering of the username/password takes about 30 seconds including firing up Firefox. On the other hand, I have my doubts that this person would have understood how to do this. I doubt the support technicians would have been able to walk it through with her either. (the guy I got on the phone last time sounded a bit panicked when I told him I was using Linux to set up my DSL) Openoffice most definitely DOES come with Ubuntu, and if, for some reason, Dell didn't ship OO with it, it's a simple installation via Synaptic. The Dell support folks should have know that. One thing that my wife has had trouble with in her online courses (besides Blackboard being super slow in Firefox) is that Openoffice can't read annotations put in her papers by her professors and vice versa, because the professors use Word. It would be really nice if colleges would switch to some sort of open format for this sort of thing! The problem in all the above is that most people are entirely unaware of Microsoft's incompatibility/lock-in games.

Re:Expected

[yincrash]

Without access to the Internet, how are you supposed to know how to do this?

What if she had a mac

[arrgster]

Would she have claimed Apple was keeping her from classes? She would have had the same issues. She is the one who choose the non-windows computer so how is it OS's fault she can't learn how to use it.

Re:Expected

[bilbravo]

Are you sure you read the entire post? Poster is not sure exactly what the situation is with Verizon, but is sure there is a work around. Not that difficult to comprehend.

What I gathered from the post was that he wasn't exactly sure what the problem was with verizon, but the poster knows enough about computers and DSL to assumed (correctly) that there is a way to connect to the internet with Verizon and with Ubuntu.

Really

[huckamania]

Maybe she really is intelligent but not really familiar with computers. Really, there are still households that do not have a computer and you really don't need a computer to do anything. Einstein never owned one. Really.

America's Best & Brightest

[itomato]

But seriously..

This may read like flamebait, but Shuttleworth needs to invest in a magazine or newsletter. There's still a lot of misconception as to what Linux or Ubuntu is/isn't, and can/can't provide.

This printed matter needs to accompany Ubuntu, no matter what media or hardware it ships on, and should serve as a FAQ and HowTo.

I submit:
---
Q: Can I use the 'Drivers and Manual' CD that came with my new 'X'?
A: No.

Q: Can I buy 'PC' games at WalMart that work with Ubuntu without special tricks?
A: No.

Q: Is Ubuntu a 'Generic' version of Windows?
A: No.

Q: Is Ubuntu a platform supported by Verizon, Rogers, AT&T, Qwest, HP, IBM, Toshiba, Apple, Samsung, Sony, Brother, or Canon?
A: No.

Q: Will Ubuntu save me money, trouble, or headaches?
A: Yes, but only if you're agile-minded and not willing to pirate Windows.

Re:Expected

[jslater25]

My first guess is that the gal ordered Ubuntu simply by choosing the cheaper computer.

I see this all the time.

[Jaysyn]

I work with an office full of people just like this. It's called learned helplessness & it pisses me off to no end. You don't want to think about a problem, you either want it to work right off the bat, have someone else fix it for you or throw your hands up & say "I can't do it".

Re:Humor? Entertainment?

[LandDolphin]

Well, obviously on her other computers. The average user has at least 3 working computers and another two they are working on, right?

Re:Humor? Entertainment?

[Mysticalfruit]

Having read the original story, there's a couple of things I noticed.

1. She accidentally ordered a laptop with Ubuntu on it. Okay, when she calls Dell, they should have been much more helpful. Yes, we geeks of the world clearly understand the superiority of Linux to windows. However, the customer is always right... If she wants windows, Dell should have been much more accommodating and put windows on the laptop.

2. Hopefully the first class this woman is going to take is a "Introduction to using the personal computer".

Re:Expected

[Mad Merlin]

The real news is at the end of the article, past the sensationalism:

However, we think we've helped her get back to school.

Verizon says it will dispatch a technician to try to assist her accessing the internet without using the Windows-only installation disk.

MATC also says it promises to accept any of Schubert's papers or class documents using whatever software she has installed.

It's really more a matter of awareness. We know that you don't need a Windows-only installation disk (sic) to access the Internet, nor do you need MS Office to save MS Office compatible files (if they even need those instead of say, a PDF), but most people don't.

Re:Expected

[trolltalk.com]

The same applies to different versions of Word on different computers. Your point?

Too much time is wasted on presentation in place of content. Students increasing font sizes and spacing to try to make a 2-page text meet the 10-page requirement, for example.

We'd all be better off if scholastic submissions were all in plain text, with carriage returns between paragraphs.

Re:Expected

[Gallomimia]

So that's when you use the drop down and save as "Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP (.doc)"

The point of the post you are replying to is to illustrate that the students are in fact ignorant of this necessity, mostly because the profs are ignorant to the fact that they must inform them of the difference. In short, it's a way to sell the new "improved" version.

Re:Humor? Entertainment?

[LandDolphin]

What is Ubuntu market share? Is it enough that Verizon needs to pay attention to it? Could you assume that most people using Ubuntu are computer savvy and can proceed to connect without the disk.

I need a new computer, this one is full...

[alcmaeon]

I was just remembering yesterday how I used to hear my clients say that they needed new computers because their old ones were full. This woman is in this category.

There are people out there who have no idea how computers work and they are prey to all sorts of disingenuous marketing and out and out disinformation.

Instead of running a news story on this, they would have done her more good by just telling her she was ignorant and pointing her in the right direction to get information so she can stop being a victim. The skills she would gain in learning about the computer and sorting the BS from the truth might even translate to other aspects of her life, like car and house buying, or job hunting.

Re:I need a new computer, this one is full...

[CodeBuster]

There are people out there who have no idea how computers work and they are prey to all sorts of disingenuous marketing and out and out disinformation.

The price of ignorance, whether of technical or financial matters, has never been higher in our society and it is growing larger all of the time. My advice to these people would be to turn off American Idle and crack a few books or Google some basic knowledge instead of whining when the smarter and more educated people take all of their money.

Re:I need a new computer, this one is full...

[gillbates]

... turn off American Idle ...

Not sure if that's intentional commentary on the show, or an ironic spelling mistake.

Re:Expected

[cbiltcliffe]

The reality of it all is that for some things you truly do need Windows because that is what the company you are working with expect. Calling and whining to the company that runs the online certification program does absolutely nothing, and all students are expected to comply with this because that is how the program works.

This isn't a problem with Linux. This isn't a problem with Apple.

This is a problem with arrogance. Specifically, the arrogance of the company that's running the program.

What they're doing isn't much different from a college wiring their buildings with 3-phase 182 volt outlets - completely non-standard crap - and ripping out all the 120 volt ones. (240 volt for some European customers)

Then, when you try to plug in your laptop, they tell you "You have to buy this specific power supply from us for a few hundred dollars."

When you bitch about it, they point to the fine print in your student guide that mentions the laptop adapter requirements.

It's retarded, and you know it. You shouldn't need to buy a whole new computer to get your course material. In your case, you didn't, because you had a Windows PC. But what about the student who just bought a top of the line Mac a year ago, and doesn't own another machine?

This certification company should be boycotted. But since 90% of the population doesn't even know they're being abused, it never will be.

Re:Expected

[ThePhilips]

You are underestimating her.

Be the girl airhead, she'd likely have a boyfriend who could have helped her to configure the lappy as she wished.

My first impression is that the girl wanted to skip classes and was just looking for excuse. And she found.

Re:Expected

[pluther]

If the Dell support rep could have just given her two or three helpful tips, she could have probably been fine. OpenOffice is a perfect replacement for Word. I don't know about her Verizon situation, but I'm sure there is a workaround for that.

My guess is, that's exactly what the Dell rep did when he "talked her into" keeping her Ubuntu box.

Seems likely that she then forgot, or didn't know where to click to launch OpenOffice, or something like that.

She's used to Windows, and didn't expect a learning curve, however small, as things are not arranged the way she's used to.

From what I've hear of Verizon's setup software, anyone even marginally technically literate will find it easier to manually set up their connection than try to rely on it.

The problem is, as I've been flamed for before, Linux is still nowhere near the point where a non-techie will consider adopting it. Although it's much better than it was even a few years ago, it's still not an idiot-friendly OS where things 'just work', compared to what people are used to.

The hard part about Linux is the initial setup. Especially finding, installing, and configuring drivers to work with all of your various hardware. Since Dell does all that part before shipping the boxes,[1] yeah, it really does "just work" by the time the consumer gets it.

---

(1) I'm assuming they do. If they don't, they're idiots. But I'm not really going so far out on a limb as to suggest that a major corporation couldn't possibly be staffed largely by idiots.

Re:Expected

[jbolden]

The popularity of OSX works well here. This is a large customer base that spends a lot on software and services that won't use windows apps.

Re:Expected

[fgaliegue]

Vista's highly annoying level of UAC was actually designed in an annoying manner on purpose, to try to get users to complain to the developers.

However, "Publisher: Microsoft Corporation" means... yeah, it backfired. :P

I wouldn't see it that way. My understanding is that MS has acknowledged the fact that (100-epsilon)% of computers out there in the wild run as admin and tried to limit this behaviour. And also that most of them don't even have a password to begin with. Meh.

But they did it the wrong way, imho. Instead of forcing a regular, non priviledged user to be created and only ask for admin privileges for some operations (as Ubuntu does), they left things as is and flooded Joe User with warnings - so many warnings that most users either answer yes every time or, if they are skilled enough, shun them.

No wonder that Vista turns out to be as little secure as its predecessors were. Ubuntu should have taught them a lesson, but... No. Go figure. And that's without even mentioning the fact that 99+% of viruses/trojans are ineffective if you run as a normal user. This is all the more a pity that Windows (from NT on) _does_ have very fine-grained security mechanisms.

Re:Expected

[neowolf]

In newer Ubuntu distributions (presumably what is pre-installed on the Dell is pretty new) compiling ANYTHING is unnecessary and using Wine is automatic. An average user should never even need to touch the terminal. A stock first-time install of Ubuntu provided her with everything she actually needed.

As many-many others have pointed out- this is a case of a person not willing to take responsibility for themselves and actually LEARN something, who instead has decided to blame others for her problems.

Re:Humor? Entertainment?

[TeXMaster]

And then, apparently, her solution [...] was to call the local news!

Which leads me to think that she is on the Microsoft paybook. Her story perfectly fits in the MS war against Linux and open source, and it needs as much media coverage as possible. Remember, spread the FUD.

Re:Expected

[deraj123]

I've always thought that Idiocracy was an insightful and predictive documentary - it's just too bad that it's such a bad movie.

Re:Expected

[jbolden]

She most likely had to go out of her way to order Ubuntu. Dell does not make it easy to do this accidentally. She didn't pay attention to what she was buying. She then had a conversation where she did understand what she bought and decided to keep it.

This is not a bait and switch.

Re:Expected

[Risen888]

But there is no reason for a normal person to find some ad-hoc work around to the software not working on an OS they have no special love for.

Response the first: So would that Verizon CD have worked if she'd put it in a Mac? Really, this is an open question to anyone who's dealt with it, I don't know.

Response the second: Guess what everybody? You can't put Playstation games in a Wii! Holy shit!

In most people's minds, Office = MS. They aren't going to go looking for random alternatives just because they are out there. That isn't the way people work.

Yeah, Applications > Office > Word Processor is just so random. I mean, who would expect it? And that interface! Why, it's just so radically different from Office 2000, of course we can't expect this poor person to possibly understand it! This is obviously the geeks' fault.

Re:Expected

[SanityInAnarchy]

But there is no reason for a normal person to find some ad-hoc work around to the software not working on an OS they have no special love for.

We're not talking about an "ad-hoc" workaround, we're talking about the normal way to do things. Verizon provides an easier solution in the form of Windows software, but from the comments I'm seeing here, that "easier" solution really isn't.

They aren't going to go looking for random alternatives just because they are out there.

Sorry, but there's a difference between Googling for something to download, and having the tiniest ounce of curiosity required even for a five year old to find Applications -> Office -> Word Processor.

The only reason to ever look for an alternative is when it DOESN'T work.

And in this case Office isn't installed. Rather than enlist a five year old to help her out, she dropped out of college. In fact, from TFA:

Verizon says it will dispatch a technician to try to assist her accessing the internet without using the Windows-only installation disk.
MATC also says it promises to accept any of Schubert's papers or class documents using whatever software she has installed.

How Software Works

[nbahi15]

This girl is typical of the mainstream, and what people often fail to grasp is that Windows is just as technically challenging to use as Linux, but there is a very large and established support infrastructure for Windows and years of conditioning the Windows experience.

As an aside, this girl is really dumb. You mean to tell me she can't find a guy to fix her computer?! Here are some easy to follow instructions:

Go to nearest Department of Computer Science
Find male
Use bedroom voice
Say "fix it."
Blow kiss

The hard part is not ending up with several guys at your apartment... Or maybe that isn't the hard part.

Re:How Software Works

[SkipRosebaugh]

So you're saying she should trade the illusion of sexual attraction for computer services? Fuck off and die.

Re:How Software Works

[nog_lorp]

Are you saying you've never had that happen to you?

Re:Humor? Entertainment?

[trolltalk.com]

The fault lives entirely with her. As proof, I offer you some of the for-credit classes offered by the "Technical School" she wanted to "attend" via the Internet ... anyone stupid enough to pay for this low caliber education is in the "you can't fix stupid" demographic:

Keyboarding Introduction
Catalog #10106101

Learn computer keyboarding (alphabetic and numeric keypad), develop speed and accuracy.

Credits: 1

Internet Introduction
Catalog #10103146

Introduction to email software: send, receive, reply to, and forward messages; attach files; use signature blocks; and organize mail in folders. Overview of Internet features: web browsers and search engines, bookmarks and shortcuts, hypertext links and URL addresses, digital camera use, and on-line web resources. Prerequisite: competency in Windows (10103124, 10103134, or 10103135).

Credits: 1

Keyboard Skillbuilding
Catalog #10106139

Identify keyboarding weaknesses through diagnostic tests and analyses. Refine keyboarding technique, increase speed and improve accuracy through individualized corrective practice. Prerequisite: 10106101 or touch keyboarding experience.

Credits: 1

Windows XP
Catalog #10103135

Introduces the Windows XP operating system: work with common elements (windows, menus, toolbars, panes, dialog boxes and Help), use accessory programs, manage files/folders using My Computer and Explorer, customize using the Control Panel and maintain the computer.

Credits: 1

Windows Vista
Catalog #10103124

This course introduces the Windows Vista operating system: work with common elements (windows, ribbons, dialog boxes, and Help), use accessory programs, manage file/folders, customize settings and maintain the computer.

Credits: 1

Word - Beginning
Catalog #10103137

Introduction to Microsoft's word processing software. Create, edit, save, format and print basic documents; cut/copy/paste and find/replace text; apply font styles and effects; add bullets and numbering; work with tabs and indents; align text; apply borders and shading; use wizards and templates to produce documents; insert headers/footers; apply different formatting to document sections; create columns; insert clip art. Create and format tables, modify rows and columns, perform calculations, sort table data, customize tables. Prerequisite: competency in Windows or Windows course (10-103-124, 10-103-134 or 10-103-135).

Credits: 1

We had classes in college that we labeled as "Mickey Mouse" - you'd sign up for one if you needed an easy credit. This, on the other hand, makes Mickey Mouse look like Einstein.

Re:Expected

[mhall119]

I don't know about her Verizon situation, but I'm sure there is a workaround for that

From what I gathered from the article, the problem was that Verizon sends a "setup CD" with their DSL modem, which contains (when I had it) a program written in MS Java 1.1 that does nothing more than configure Windows to use DHCP. Verizon claims that you need to run this program to get the DSL setup, but it's completely unnecessary on Windows or Linux.

This woman's problem was that she was told she needed to have things that she didn't need to have. She was told she had to run the CD when she didn't, she was told she needed MS Word, when all she needed was to read+write .doc files.

Ultimately she gave up on an online education because she couldn't figure out her computer, which makes me thing that she wasn't all that interested in getting it all to work in the first place.

Guess what? I don't even use or like Linux!

[MikeRT]

And a Linux/Ubuntu fanboy, much like yourself, convinced her she didn't need to because "Ubuntu was great, college students loved it, it was compatible with everything I needed". Your analogy fails because under said analogy, she went to the mechanic who told her everything was fine and not to worry about it.

Ahh, the number of times I've been downmodded on Slashdot for criticizing Linux... you'd think I was a fanboy for Microsoft with the number of times that I've said that even Windows XP is faster out of the box. Where your analogy falls down is that what she did was the equivalent of calling the car dealership up and asking them if something weren't quite right with her car when the dealership had no incentive to say "well, you really intended to get this, but you settled for this based on your order."

3)If it has taken her several months to get to this point and she needs the laptop to take the on-line course and can't afford to buy another one or to buy Windows to put on this one, it makes sense that she cancel her classes until she can in fact attend them.

You can get Windows XP for about $100 on Tiger Direct, and most people know at least someone who can run the Windows installer and get it up and running. For that matter, what happened to the computer she used to buy it. Was it someone else's?

I would say you are an arrogant asshole for assuming that everyone is a technical expert who knows about Linux and assuming she is incompetent because she trusted customer support at the place she bought the computer from. I can only hope that you are fired from your job for being an asshole, so no one ever has to deal with your sorry ass.

It takes a special breed of hypocrite to take the moral high ground while blatantly wishing evil on others. Have you ever actually looked at Dell's offerings and realized that the only laptops that they have for home users that cost $1,100 are ones that only get distributed with Windows? Either she got really badly ripped off on a Dell Netbook or something is very fishy here.

Re-read your own post - either a plant, or a moron

[zooblethorpe]

5 Months is quite possible if it really isn't that high on your priority. Call tech support they give you a vague response. Mess with it a little once a week. Get fed up and call again after a month or so.

Considering that this woman ostensibly had to cancel two semesters worth of enrollment, this sounds like it should be a good deal higher on her priority list than what you suggest.

Which leaves two likely scenarios -- either it's a fake, or she's a certifiable moron. I certainly hope it's a fake -- if not, I truly fear for the future of humanity. This would be one individual that would not have been smart enough to survive back in the day. If she really is this dumb (I don't mean dumb about Linux, I mean dumb enough to cancel out of two semesters of a *technical* college rather than bother to find someone with half a clue to help her -- this would apply to *any* OS, or *any* technical snafu of any sort), such extra stupidity wandering around the gene pool can't be a good thing.

Cheers,

Re:The school is a joke...

[hansamurai]

Yeah, judge a school entirely by its online courses. Let's look at some of their real classes:

Advanced Bioinformatics
Catalog #10007181

This capstone course in Bioinformatics provides the student with experience in the design and implementation of basic programming concepts applied to bioinformatics problems. Using the skills gained in previous certificate courses, the student designs and completes an independent project using the Perl programming language, Oracle database, and internet technology in the UNIX operating system. Prerequisite: grade of C or better in all certificate courses and concurrent enrollment in 10-007-180, 10-152-111, 10-152-120, 10-152-125, 10-152-151, and completion of or concurrent enrollment in 10-154-190.

Credits: 4

and

Clinical Ophthalmic Procedures
Catalog #31516327

This course prepares the technician to assist the doctor in advanced office techniques in the area of ultrasound, in-office surgical procedures, case history and scribing. Students will also study various systemic diseases and their affect on the eye. The performance of various skills is emphasized in the laboratory sessions. Prerequisites: 31-516-315, 31-516-301, 31-516-305, 31-509-303Prerequisites: Ophthalmic Pre-Testing 31516301; Ocular Anatomy 31516315; Basic Optical Concepts 31516305 and Body Structure 300-level or higher.

Credits: 2

and

Network Security Design
Catalog #10150193

This course affords the network security specialist the opportunity to conduct a vulnerability analysis upon a network in order to practice or refine the attack methodologies with the hacker tools and techniques to which the student was exposed during the various program courses. The student must demonstrate the ability to design, plan and execute a vulnerability analysis against an organization network. In this class, students learn the skills necessary for the Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP) certification. Prerequisite: 10-150-164 and 10-150-196

Credits: 3

and

X-Ray Microanalysis
Catalog #10636141

Students perform elemental analysis with energy dispersive X-ray systems on both TEM and SEMs. The use of matrix corrections, qualitative and quantitative computer analysis routine will constitute a major part of this course. Prerequisite: grade of C or better in both 10-636-131 and 10-636-132, or consent of the instructor.

Credits: 4

Re:Expected

[BronsCon]

I've always had to provide near constant support for my mom's Windows PC, from 95, to 98, to XP, to Vista.

She's also had a Linux laptop for the last 3 years. The extent of support I gave her with it was helping her eBay a new battery and telling her where to get the Ubuntu ISO and how to burn it.

She installed it herself, configured it herself and manages the system quite fine on her own. That little 1Ghz P3 with 512MB of RAM runs circles around her brand new Vista system.

Re:Humor? Entertainment?

[MightyYar]

I'm not a conspiracy hound, but maybe you are right... how does one "accidentally" order Ubuntu? It's not an option in their customizer... you have to somehow navigate through to their open source page, which then links you to their open source computers. And the picture shows an Inspiron, which to get to $1100, you literally have to max out... also seems fishy. I mean, if she really knows so little about computers, how did she know to max out everything? And if she was going to drop $1100 on a notebook, why didn't she click on the $1000 XPS instead of the $500 Inspiron?

Probably still not a conspiracy, though.

Re:Expected

[cyphercell]

Yes and no. Verizon is having to dispatch a technician to physically go to her house to setup the Internet connection and Dell is not prepared to offer options like Crossover Office. Support from the companies that are intended to offer Internet support and software support. Both Dell and Verizon have failed. What's really sad is that there's no reason both Dell and Verizon can't contract out to someone that is both willing and capable of supporting Linux systems.

The probem is something else entirely....

[Wain13001]

The problem here is being highly misappropriated by the media coverage and even much of slashdot.

The real issue here is simple...people who do not know anything about computers should not be enrolled in ONLINE classes at their local university.

In fact, of the 3 universities I've worked at, all of them had a large amount of disclaimers essentially stating just that. "You will be responsible for your own technical issues, the university cannot provide for you in case of problems, please make sure that your computer is not only reliable, but that you understand how to configure your own internet, and computer maintenance before enrolling in online classes...blah blah blah"

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind from reading TFA that the woman here would have had just as many problems using Windows and Word, and then would be harassing some poor kid at a computer lab into doing all of her formatting, emailing, and homework submissions for her anyway.

We have not yet developed a stupid-user-friendly interface that is sufficient to handle the sort of person who is likely to struggle to find the power button...and the truth is, we shouldn't have to.

There is nothing wrong with requiring someone to know how to use their own tools in order to partake in a lesson.

Re:Expected

[thtrgremlin]

I think part of the problem is lack of cross platform support by places like Verison and what I am going to guess is University of Phoenix. As far as "what people are used to", if these two companies only train in XP and Vista, if you have NT4, Windows 2000, Windows 98, 2003 Server or anything that isn't EXACTLY what the phone techs were trained for, they arn't going to be able to help you AT ALL. Same issue with Word. If today the schools techs are only trained in Office 2008, if you have Office 2003 (or whatever was last) you are totally screwed. They can't help you one bit. OpenOffice is very easy to use and to learn, but if you get stuck, don't expect a phone monkey following a book to give you any assistance.

But I can understand in a way. When you are helping someone with a computer, you might be able to use it intuitively, but even another expert describing some version of software you are not intimately familiar with, you are going to be completely lost in your ability to help them.

Sure, there are some things that could make certain features more obvious in how to use, but personally in the way I use the computer today, that would just amount to bloat. I am a bit saddened that so much work is going into dumb GUIs to enable people to do things in an over simplified way that already worked just fine if you took a sec to look at the documentation for the config file, or where CL switches have just become check boxes. BLEH! But I will admit that came after quite a bit of poking around and making a deliberate effort to understand why things were designed the way they were. It is why Linux was always referred to (10 years ago) as the system by computer experts for computer experts. If it is by experts for experts, isn't it probably pretty good? It does "just work", but it does work differently.

But hey, deliberate learning for the sake of it isn't for everyone.

Re:Expected

[sholsinger]

She doesn't have a broadband wireless card, she has DSL. This is different. In Verizon's efforts to save money by allowing the users to install the CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) rather than sending out techs to set it up, they added a "wizard on CD" to walk the customer through setting it up.

So the paper flier that you find when you open your box of gear, says, "Please insert the CD into your computer and follow the on-screen instructions." So, in an effort to save money, VZ has alienated customers who don't know they don't need the CD.

Besides TFA shows that the news channel contacted Verizon and they're sending a tech out to set it up for her.

So, rather than talking to Verizon about the problem, or her school, she just bitched an moaned until the local news station took a negative Linux is bad spin on it. The school, (after talking with the reporter) has agreed to accept her work in whatever format she can provide.

Not to mention, if she had insisted with DELL that she wanted to return the laptop for one with windows, she could have done so.

So in conclusion, I believe that this is a simple case of laziness and should be chalked up to "provide-more-documentation-in-the-users-face".

Lets make a little video that runs on the first boot that shows the user how to use the system as it comes pre-configured? If they want to watch it, great, if not, they can close it. But perhaps it should live on their desktop so they can watch it again if they "accidentally" closed it prematurely.

Re:Expected

[ravenshrike]

Well there's your problem, you have to use all of a Ubuntu install to have it work properly. Using only some of the install is just asking for trouble.

Plenty of blame to go around

[blang]

Assuming the version of events in the article are correct, then I blame Dell first.

Dell's job should be to serve the customer and get them what they want, since Dell can't possibly guess what they need. Talking someone into using something they are not familiar with is a misplaced form of advocacy. It is as bad as talking people into buying something they don't need.

That she payed a whopping $1100 for a laptop makes it even worse. Since she is a bit of a ludite, I expect the computer will not be used for extreme graphics or number crunching. So she probably overpaid by as much as $500 versus what she really needed. However this was her choice, and her bad. She should have asked savvy friends for advice on this purchase, or done some research on "the intenets".

I cannot blame her for complaining about the verizon CD. That's how that stuff is sold, and even many so called "power users" would not know how to configure that stuff if the CD didn't do it automatically for them. I find it hard to blame Verizon as well, since it is non-trivial to do automatic setup via CD for linux. Maybe something clever could be done, but there will always be some that fall between the cracks.

Ultimately I like to blame Dell here. If their sales interface was better, she would not only have gotten what she wanted, and maybe even what she needed.

I am a big ubuntu fan myself, but find it idiotic that other fans pretend to know what is best for others. If ubuntu was an exact drop in replacement for windows, then I don't see what the advocacy is about, and if it isn't then someone who wants whatever they are used to should be allowed to do so. (someone might argue that Vista is even more different from what she is used to than ubuntu, but that would be Microsoft's problem, not a problem of misplaced advocacy)

I also question this bad habit of many ludites to call customer service for help. Don't people have friends anymore, or are they ashamed to ask for help?

I am also disturbed that the default kneejerk response to this story is even more ubuntu advocacy. Ironic when considering that misplaced advocacy is what gave ubuntu a black eye here in the first place. Way to go morons, in destroying for an OS that I love.

Re:Expected

[bb5ch39t]

AT&T sure doesn't. I even have a Mac in addition to my Linux boxes. They don't support anything other than current Windows (XP or later) for any diagnostics. This, when my DSL modem was the actual problem. Oh, and they don't support my Netgear VPN router as the box connected to the DSL line. Totally blew their minds. "What's a router?"

Re:Expected

[anarxia]

I get lots of calls for Windows-related issues, very few for Mac OSX and nearly zero for Linux. This is definite proof that linux has less issues than OS X and far fewer than Windows. Discussion closed!

Re:Expected

[ravenshrike]

Or she could have dropped by the local geek habitat and asked the tech monkeys to fix it. Of course, then she might get knowledge flung at her.

Universities need to be more 'open'

[unconfused1]

My wife recently went back to school at Missouri State University, and I was surprised at how specific all the the classes are as to what platform and formats they teach or use for classes. She is in the Masters of Education program.

Most of the primary schools in the Springfield area have Macs in computer labs and in the classrooms. But every class she has taken so far has been focused on Windows XP (sometimes Vista) with Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows specifically.

We have Macs primarily in our household, and use OpenOffice 3. However a great number of the PowerPoint 2007 files (pptx) would not display correctly in OpenOffice, so she was at a great disadvantage. We ended up having to get a copy of Office 2007 for our one old Windows XP machine.

It would be nice for education to advocate and use more open formats.

Re:Expected

[morgauo]

And that is the problem Linux faces on the desktop.

Just about every argument I've read in the last 7 years or more against Linux being ready on the Desktop has revolved around "this piece of hardware is difficult to get working" or "I need X application because that's what my work, school, etc... uses".

First off, when a hardware vendor supports Linux either by writing the driver themselves or better yet by releasing enough info to allow the community to do so it is very rarely difficult to install. In fact, being experienced in both Windows and Linux I would say for supported hardware Linux is EASIER. An example, I recently upgraded my video card. Both new and old were nVidia. Know what I had to do in the software? NOTHING!! The nVidia driver supports all nVidia cards and setup is pretty much the same. I just pulled the old one out and put the new one in. In Windows I would have had to install a driver. Not the worlds most difficult task but... one more step than in Linux.

The problem is a chicken & egg problem. Linux will not be a mainstream desktop OS w/o the hardware support, it will not get the hardware support w/o being a mainstream desktop OS.

Then the software. Using Wine might still be a little much to ask of someone whith no inherent interest in computers, just a desire to do his/her homework. (To be fair it really isn't that hard though if you have even a little interest in learning) So, only considering apps that run natively in Linux is there really that large a percentage of people whom need something which isn't available in Linux?

Take MSOffice which seems to come up again and again as a "necessity". People argue endlessly over wether or not OpenOffice is full featured in comparison to MSOffice. Personally I have no idea. I rarely use an office suite beyond writing a simple letter or maybe typing up a list in a spreadsheet. I do know that both office suites have way more features than I will ever use. For that matter, so does KOffice, AbiWord/Gnumeric and I'm sure many others. Am I really so alone in this?

I can't believe more than 10% of MSOffice users use any more of the features than that. The only other app I hear about regularly... Adobe Photoshop. How many fingers do you need to count the number of people you know whom use Photoshop? And beyond the features found in Gimp? No, your answer doesn't count if you work in a large graphics shop. Most computer users don't.

So, what if the 90% whom could switch did so? Well, that would have to tip the scales enough to get the hardware vendors to support Linux better and proprietary software released w/ Linux versions (if you really need it).

I realize that untill this happens the majority of people have no real motivation to make it happen. This isn't an issue of Linux not being ready though, it's just momentum. Still, I can't believe that one company, which has only been around for one generation will dominate computers (which increasingly dominate society) so thouroughly as Microsoft currently does forever. But what will it take?

Re:Expected

[sarhjinian]

Fair comment, actually.

The worst thing you can do for someone is give them a new computer. I've worked in very large shops (~2500-3000 desktop deployments per year), and fielded questions from small ones as well as from individual users. People get used to the methods their computer presents them (their files are *here*, their Word program is *there*, they get on the internet *this way*). Give them a new computer, any computer, even if it's the same OS, and they're hosed.

Where are their shortcuts? How do they get to the "H:" drive? What about the TPR form (that was sitting in a message, in Outlook, that they kept opening whenever they needed a new copy). I don't think IT people can really appreciate how the secretaries, order takers and commerce students of the world function. It's not necessarily a Linux thing (though Linux raises the barrier height more than a little). After working with some of these people for a while, I have no idea how they cope when they rent a car that's different from their own, get a new toaster, or buy a new light switch: the least little difference completely flummoxes them. Stupid might be a harsh, if not an entirely inaccurate term

This woman is probably in this category: given a difference---any difference---and she promptly "shuts down" and goes into silent panic mode. The opportune question is why it took so long for her to admit to the problem. I've taken calls from managers screaming because some order-desk flunkie hasn't been able to work since her PC was replaced three weeks ago, and now she can't find her RMA form shortcut and everything's "all different" (for the record: XP to XP, Office 2003 to Office 2003, no changes save the hardware and a new profile upon login, all documents saved to Sharepoint and/or fileservers, mailbox in Exchange). Why she didn't call three weeks ago was the point I raised, and the one I never got an answer for.

There's a certain willfull stupidity in the general populace. They don't know computers, they can't know them, it's an evil black box and they'll find anything possible to complain about. They can be young, old, male, female, of any race, creed to culture: they're bound together by their raw, unadulterated pigheadedness.

At some point, the paradigm is going to have to change. I don't know how it will change: Terminal Server-like remote desktops with a Time Machine like backup strategy available through an always-on internet connection? Web desktops? Special-purpose devices in lieu of general-purpose PCs?

Smell test

[jmorris42]

What is relevant is that she received a laptop configured in a manner she was unfamiliar with.

No, what is relevant is her story doesn't pass the smell test. It's an astroturf campaign. Go to Dell.com and TRY to recreate her story. The only Linux you can easily find is the little mini and that ain't what she bought. You have to search on linux in the search bar to find any of their other Ubuntu offerings and the page you get dropped on says this:

Not sure Open Source is for You? The main thing to note is that when you choose open source you don't get a Windows® operating system. If you're here by mistake and you are looking for a Dell PC with Windows, please use the following link.

Assume she somehow managed to get there, which is improbable enough. If she bought after reading that she is not college material. And this ignores the fact she was buying a computer for college and didn't a) inquire as to their requirements before purchase and b) didn't get in on the discounts most colleges have on both the laptop itself and she could have probably picked up Windows+Office at a massive student discount. Colleges are full of nerds who would have been happy to help her either install Windows or learn to use Ubuntu for the price of pizza and her company. The town has a LUG for crying out loud, help was at hand.

Re:Re-read your own post - either a plant, or a mo

[Rasta_the_far_Ian]

I noticed that a number of people mentioned that this person went to technical college.

The term "technical college" can mean two different things in the U.S. - it can refer to a university with strong engineering offerings, or it can refer to a type of community college that is strictly focused on teaching job related skills at a level roughly equivalent to that of upperclassmen at a leading high school.

Generally, admission criteria for the latter are quite low, the idea being to give these people with minimal skills enough skills to become productive in jobs such as auto mechanic, etc.

I suspect this person went to this second type of "technical college".

Re:Details?

[jim0203]

Me neither. I've come across this problem before - I teach people with disabilities basic IT skills, for a charity. We don't have much money so I sometimes use refurbished kit running Ubuntu. This usually works absolutely fine; the biggest problem is when another family member sees Ubuntu, gets confused, and tells my student that their computer is "wrong". I don't quite know where I stand on this. When I'm feeling charitable, I think it's just a problem of education. When I'm feeling less charitable, the attitude some people have towards Linux - "different" = "bad" - seems a little too close to some pretty nasty aspects of humanity. Not everyone with this lady's limited experience would have reacted like she did. Dell didn't help, but I'm guessing she was pretty closed-minded from the start.

I love a small ISP

[grahamsz]

I'm with mesa networks and they are awesome.

Had a tech out diagnosing some problem and he was quite happy with a root prompt on my laptop to test things.

Saw my router and immediately asked if i'd gone with DD-WRT or something else.

I pay a little more than comcast, but that's a small price to pay for not dealing with comcast.

Re:Humor? Entertainment?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Two words: Public library.

There's always a form of Internet connection, usually free, even if you don't own a computer. Public libraries tend to have free computer time, though they may charge for printouts -- reasonable, if you have to take it with you, or bring the laptop into the library (it's a laptop, after all) and use it there.

For that matter, they've probably got wifi, so you bring the laptop in, Google search on one of the library computers to learn how to connect to wifi on Ubuntu (though seriously, that's not hard), then free up the library computer and use your laptop for the other searches.

Fear of Technology is the problem

[coren2000]

The woman is an airhead.

No she isn't. Simply because a person doesn't understand modern PCs doesn't mean she is an airhead. I bet she can do a thousand things you cannot.

Modern computers are complex pieces of equipment that have been stigmatized as "easily breakable" and "something you don't play with." When I was young I would get in so much trouble for playing with the computer because it was expensive and my parents were scared I would screw it up (thank god I ignored them). This leads people do attempt do to *exactly as they are told* when it comes to PCs.

The airheads are the people who don't do what they are told but SAY they did.

This means that if the school tells the girl to use MS Office, she does; insert a disk to install the internet, and she does. no questions asked. if she cant do these things, then she is screwed because she is under the perception that she shouldn't try playing & learning about the computer.

The problem isn't the girl, nor is it dell, nor is it Ubuntu. The problem is society being afraid of technology and being so scared about "screwing it up."

This is what we as nerds/geeks have to fight against. *Stop being afraid of technology people!*

Re:Fear of Technology is the problem

[commodore64_love]

>>>I bet she can do a thousand things you cannot.

An advanced knowledge in Kama Sutra still doesn't erase her stigma as an "airhead". It merely makes her more fun to have around.

(ducks a spitball)

Re:Expected

[JWSmythe]

    I've run into this a lot. When someone calls me and says a tech is coming out to help them get set up, I tell them to refuse to let them put the CD in. There's no need.

    I've been to many places, with many providers, usually with my laptop, waiting for them to come install. One place blatantly refused to install without a Windows computer, so I dug up an old Win95 workstation, and they were satisfied. A few times, they've had me sign a small waiver saying that I refused the install CD.

    For anything but dialup accounts, there's nothing to it. Most OS's come set up for DHCP on the ethernet. Plug the cable in, turn it on, and you're done. The CD is usually extra "assistance" software. I've never gotten down and dirty enough to dissect their software, but I'd be pretty sure there is a good bit of spyware in it. I know one vendor provided a CD that included something resembling GoToMyPC. Really, do you want to open up your computer so anyone at the ISP can log into your computer? The only reason to ask the ISP for help is when the connection doesn't work, at which time that is a moot point.

    This lady didn't ask for a non-Windows machine though. She may have unintentionally ordered the wrong thing. Mistakes happen, they should have let her return it for what she wanted.

    If (IF) she wanted to keep Linux, they should have told her where to click for Abiword/OpenOffice, and that it was the equivalent of MSWord, except totally free.

    If (IF) she wanted to keep Linux, Verizon should have been able to tell her that "all you do is plug the cable in", rather than saying it was impossible on anything but Windows.

    So, lots of mistakes made a news story. She doesn't know Linux yet, but hopefully she'll be more interested in learning in the future. The reps at Dell and Verizon should have been more cooperative. If they had been, and knew what they were doing, then this wouldn't have been a story at all. That is, unless it turns out that it's actually something choreographed by Microsoft, trying to lock down their market share.

Re:Expected

[jimicus]

Seriously, she should take some classes on critical thinking or something...

I seriously doubt she possesses the faculty to recognise that need in herself.

No Optical Drive

[BaDooDoo]

I did not read TFA, so correct me if I'm wrong but... Was this woman smart enough to purchase an external CD-Rom drive or not (judging from the rest of the article she probably wasn't). Did she realize she was ordering a computer that did not include an optical drive? Again, maybe, maybe not. I'm sure if she had called Dell and said I can't install my "Windows Only Verizon DSL CD" any tech support person with half a brain would tell her she had purchased a computer without an optical drive! Just how did she expect to install software from a CD to begin with? There are a lot of holes in this story if you ask me. The fact that the woman knows enough to blame "Ubuntu" but shows such ignorance towards anything else computer related makes me think this is a B.S. story. Also, why does she need to refer to it as a "Windows Only Verizon DSL CD"? Seems like the Windows Only portion was a plug. (i.e. smart enough to know the O/S is the problem but not smart enough for anything else) Also, if given the choice of purchasing a machine with Windows or something you had neveer heard of called Ubuntu, wouldn't any rational person knowing very little about computers (as this woman appears to be, knowing very little about computers that is, not necessarily rational) go with a Windows machine instead of something they had never heard of? The price point is not that much higher for the XP model, so I don't see this as a point of contention. As an aside, I owned several Dell laptops back in the day and always found their tech support to be top notch. Far better than the horror stories I heard from other manufacturers. I have heard the customer service has fallen off over the years, but to me this story sounds a bit far fetched. Whatever, my $.02. It probably wasn't worth the 5 minutes it took to respond, but this article is just asinine.

Couple Observations

[HermMunster]

None of the issues she had appear to be due to Ubuntu. They appear to be in this order:

1) she didn't get what she wanted -- didn't know what she wanted and maybe randomly picked, but what she says she wanted was a bread and butter PC.

2) She didn't know how to get her DSL active without the CD.

3) She didn't know how to create .doc files without Word.

First things first. A couple of questions:

1) What if the CD for the DSL activation didn't work? Would she still have skipped 2 semesters (which is almost a whole year of school).

2) Did she realize that it would have cost her money to purchase Office? If she didn't know that would she also have dropped out?

The point behind these questions is that it seems far too questionable that any one or both of those issues would have resulted in someone deciding not to enroll for not one semester of college but two. If something that simple was happening just about anything could have set her off and caused her to decide not to enroll.

There are computer labs, there are neighbors and friends, there are computer shops to help configure and repair--what's more important going to anyone of those or wasting a year of your life by waiting for a solution to any of those two given problems? So, she didn't waste the time, but she did delay her education for a year. And why not more than 2 semesters as it seems no one has given her a solution yet.

And for someone whom it seems is unable to accept anything but the status quo she seems pretty well posed in the picture, as if she's using it.

On to the Verison DSL. She should have called Verison and had them activate her modem or send a technician out to do it, or get friend's laptop to activate the modem.

The obvious problem with that is that Verision wants to take ownership of her computer by branding it and by tracking her via software they install. I generally uninstall that stuff when I see it and I inform them that it is optional software completely unnecessary. So, she could have borrowed a computer or had a friend come over and activate the modem but she didn't know it because Verison wasn't performing full disclosure as to what that software does and whether it is necessary once the modem is active.

She may not have been aware that Office costs a pretty penny, unless of course she knew this and was after the college's student & home version of Office (for non-commercial use only). And she didn't know that using crossover office or even Wine she could have it up and running.

She probably wasn't aware that she also could use Open Office, which many pointed out here. And yes, there are many formatting issues and yes, instructors do grade you down for mis-spellings and poor formatting--they only give you so much credit for the actual content of what you write.

But nonetheless if they were using the proper filters she could have used ODT as her file format and it would have been up to them to ensure that they used a product that could read it and format it properly, as ODT is an ISO standard. In this sense she would have been right and they would have had the burden to accept industry standard file formats that are accepted by a world-wide standards organization. Which is what the schools should be doing as they are governmentally funded.

Foremost in all this the issue had nothing to do with Ubuntu nor its usability. Her installation of the Verison CD could have failed under Windows, easily. There are many problems that crop up when installing drivers and software under windows and if that was sufficient to stop her education under Ubuntu it should have been sufficient to stop her education under Windows--so this is a no-go for blaming Ubuntu.

Her college stated they'd take whatever format she chose to submit her assignments in showing that at least they had some modicum of technical knowledge so Open Office documents submitted in ODT format should have sufficed. The end result is that she let her educati

Re:Expected

[Scoth]

I actually ran into something amusing relating to rental cars. I went to lunch with a coworker of mine who had a rental while some accident damage was fixed. It was starting to rain, and she didn't turn on the wipers. I finally asked and she said something like "Oh, they won't stay on" and demonstrated by pushing down on the wiper bar. Sure enough, the bar popped right back up and they only did one wipe. I reached over, pushed the bar *up*, and they worked like you'd expect. Apparently the bar worked opposite her car, and it didn't even occur to her to try the other way. (Note I called her a coworker, and not a friend. She's actually pretty annoying)

Re:Expected

[JWSmythe]

    I have a Verizon FiOS network, with 128 IP's, that we're running a small hosting business on. There's a small problem on the line, so I asked for a field tech to come out and replace their outside box. No big deal, just come, swap out your slightly defective unit for a good one, so it doesn't become a bigger problem in the near future. We're getting the occasional CRC error on the uplink, and have already swapped the equipment on our side.

    They asked what OS I was running. "Well, about a dozen Linux machines, and a half dozen Win2k/S2k3 machines."

    They asked "So are you running XP or Vista"

    I had to start over. "This is a business FiOS line. We're using it for a small hosting business. We have many machines. We have 128 IP's from you because of that. "

    Then they asked me which of their routers we are using. {sigh} Their routers are crap. They provide us with a Cat5 ethernet cable from their demarc outside. That goes directly into a Cisco Catalyst 2924XL-EN.

    "Oh, if you're not using our router, we can't help you. Maybe you can call Cisco."

    I blew up inside, but very politely told them that I am a Cisco Certified Network Administrator, and I have worked as a higher level Cisco Engineer for the past 12 years. I'll be more than happy to help you with this matter. By evaluating the errors, there appears to be a failure on your side of the link, which would be your demarc on the wall. If you could be kind enough to have a field technician come out and swap the demarc, I would be very happy.

    That got me put on hold. He came back, apparently with one of their "network engineers" on chat with him. He'd type what I said, wait for a response, and then read it back to me. Over the next half hour, the engineer finally told me that it was obviously a routing issue somewhere on the Internet, and I should run traceroutes to see where it is, but it's definitely outside of Verizon's control. I told the CSR that was still on the phone with me echoing the "network engineer" responses, that the "network engineer" was a complete blithering idiot, who wouldn't be able to diagnose a network problem to save his life. There's no way in hell that a CRC errror comes from anywhere but either the two endpoints of a cable, one of which is my switch, and the other their demarc, or the cable in between. They made it clear that the cable is property of Verizon, or I'd swap that too.

    Ahhh, now I'm worked up. I'm going to start calling them again. It's been several weeks of trying to get them to address this. I'm tempted to hit it with a stun gun, just so it'll be completely down, and they can come out and fix it. Too bad I don't own a stun gun. :)

Re:Expected

[sckeener]

I'm sure we've all been in that situation and I know I lied and told the tech exactly what he wanted to hear....

Admittedly the factual information was correct, just not the method or screens.

Re:Expected

[JWSmythe]

    hehe.

    I've never had to support thousands of desks, but I've had enough to hate supporting desktops. :)

    I've actually been annoyed to the point where I 3 links on the desktop.

    Firefox - labeled as "INTERNET"
    Thunderbird - labeled as "EMAIL"
    OpenOffice - labeled as "WORD"

    If I never tell them that they're not using MSIE, Outlook, and MSWord, 99.9% of them never know the difference. You have to be very careful not to tell them though. As soon as they figure it out, they'll start crying that it doesn't work and they need the MS product installed. That's always funny after they've been using the free options for months without any problems. :)

    At one place, a few people started getting pissy about needing Office 2007 Professional. I let them rant, and I didn't even get pissy back. I just told them what the current pricing was, and that they can either pick it up on their way to work in the morning, or explain to their manager why they needed something that expensive, when everyone else was using the free option. For some reason, they never came to me with their nice fresh new Office 2k7 pro CD to install for them. :)

Re:Expected

[Glonoinha]

ThePhilips has a point though - all this girl had to do was find a nice computer tech and start dating him, turn him into her boyfriend and her entire life would have been saved.

Heck, it doesn't even take 100% dedication from the techie - she could have shared him with a half dozen of her other hot girlfriends, each of them spend one day out of the week with him and they could have all been saved.

Damn, someone needs to make some computer tech saves hot blond chicks porn. This would totally work.

Re:Expected

[berashith]

more than half of this comment matches my wife perfectly ( down to the hardware specs), but my son is only 20 months old. I knew the kid was quick , but didnt realize he could type already.

Re:Expected

[Firethorn]

Too bad I don't own a stun gun. :)

Good excuse to buy one though.

Re:Expected

[KasperMeerts]

Emacs wouldn't be hidden in the "Office" menu, but more likely in the "Programming" section. And if she would open it, she would probably realize that's not what she was looking for and close it.

I mean, if she couldn't understand that she was looking for "Word processor" then I don't think she would have passed the class in the first place. And what do you think she would have done if Vista had been installed on the laptop? Vista doesn't come with an office suite. And all the buttons are in a different place than on XP. Panic, panic, panic, let's call the news? No, she would have asked the person using the brain cell in the family to "fix" it for her.

Re:Expected

[cloudmaster]

I bought an EEEPC, turned it on, selected my wireless network, and proceeded to complete an online course at my local University - including typing papers - with 0 changes to the computer. That EEEPC runs Linux. Firefox was the browser (which several online programs will complain about right off the bat) and Open Office was the word processor. I exported the documents as PDFs, but the exported word documents would've worked just as well. Ok, I technically did install wireshark and tcpdump, since it was a network security course and I needed to use those, but I'm fairly confident that this woman wasn't attempting to take a graduate-level network security course. And it was easier to install those on Linux than Windows...

I've recently installed EEEBuntu on the machine, and like it better - but even that, with the similar easy interface, uses the same programs to do the same things. This woman was clearly unable to learn things, and would've had the same problems with Windows. For example, a new computer often comes with a new MS Office, and new MS Office formats often don't open in older MS Office setups (like a University may well have). My wife was in an online course a year or so ago where there were students having troubles through the semester because their MS Word/PowerPoint versions were newer than the school's version, and documents wouldn't open. Open Office would not have had that issue, as it doesn't usually export to the latest format...

Re:Expected

[Random BedHead Ed]

Give them a new computer, any computer, even if it's the same OS, and they're hosed.

I've always suspected the problem is deeper than a mere "they don't understand computers" issue. The gory details of where a person keeps their documents and how he or she interacts with them and deals with information sources like the Web have nothing to do with IT specifically, but rather offer a more general window into the user's thought process. When you get involved with performing major maintenance on or replacing someone's computer, you're involving yourself in how they treat information generally - how they organize their files, remember important facts, and process incoming data. And most people stink at these things.

I remember one woman I used to support who made backups of her entire directory tree by making a copy of the tree under a new directory, which she'd invaariably name with her initials - let's say they're DMC to protect her identity. So almost every time I'd visit her to fix something on her computer I'd discover that she'd be nearly out of disk space (which was often the source of the problem), and the reason was that there would be a DMC folder containing a dupe of everything ... including previous backups, each in its own DMC folder, nested in a way that made me laugh, but also nearly drove me mad. I'd end up having to reconcile three or four different DMC folders in order to bring her back to a safe level of disk space.

But guess what? Her office was also a mess! Having a computer doesn't cause this sort of problem. It just involves IT people in the fallout.

Re:Expected

[Reivec]

I also have a friend that wasn't too computer savy and she used to call me all the time trying to fix windows problems she had until finally she decided to buy a Dell with Ubuntu on it. What made it work for her is that she didn't try to force everything to work how she was used to things working. She knew it would be a learning curve and took the time to relearn how to use her computer.

She now NEVER calls me asking for help and frequently talks about how happy she is not having to use windows anymore and how many fewer problems she has. Ubuntu can be used by the computer illiterate. It just can't be used by stupid windows users that think if it doesn't work like windows it is broken.

Re:Expected

[Locutus]

This really sounds like one of those "Joe the Plumber" stories where it could very well be motivated by some other process. After all, it's impressive that she found a system which had Ubuntu on it by default. She sounds really naive about computers, as does the article author, but yet she found her way to a $1,100 Dell laptop which came preloaded with Ubuntu and not Microsoft's Windows Vista.

What she did was really tough to do while being so naive. And let's not even get into how she claimed she needed it to have Microsoft Word but she could not have ordered that computer with Microsoft Office. I don't think Dell ships Ubuntu preloaded with WINE or even CrossOver Office. Could she really be so dumb as to decide she "needs" a computer to register for classes, not see what that registration system or the school requires and find her way through Dell's site and doesn't get a low cost laptop but a $1,100 model which has Ubuntu on it? This just sounds too convenient as in the "Joe the Plumber" situation.

She's one heck of a confused computer user or a mediocre publicity stunt by Waggener Edstrom or Microsft's current PR firm. And has her high school not taught her anything about computers? Maybe someone should research her high school to see if one child was left behind.

LoB

The REAL problem.

[crhylove]

Is not Dell, it's not Ubuntu, and it's not the stupid girl. Though she is obviously stupid. The problem is that schools should be promoting Open Office and other free programs, rather than shoveling kids money into private corporations like Microsoft.

If I was a school administrator I would mandate FOSS or at least open standards. Anything else is the opposite of education. It'd making people increasingly uneducated. To think, this poor idiot girl is probably PAYING for that "service"!

Re:Expected

[The Great Pretender]

The problem is that the woman may never have heard of Open Office and likely when told to use Word that's what she thought she should use. Just because you and I understand the differences and how to use both, it doesn't mean that everyone has our experiences, or ability, in this area. Would you assume that someone who has driven an automatic their whole life could suddenly drive stick? Yet both things do as good a job. The bottom-line is that the Dell rep at the first sale point should have inquired about the need and then inform the lady that by attempting to buy a cheaper PC she would loose the MS abilities. My assumption here is that she didn't know and the Dell (Linux) rep told her that Linux will do everything that Windows does, where that's a mis-statement. It may perform function to achieve similar goals, but it uses different methods. She then needed to not buy the computer, but go off and figure out if Linux was right for her. At which point either through knowing windows, or plumping for the familiar she would have chosen windows. At the end of the day, IMHO, her fault for not doing better research before purchasing.

Well, Cisco was supposed to teach you the ritual!

[Medievalist]

Here's the part about dealing with telcos that your CNA trainer must have skipped:

You: a squirrel has chewed through the FioS line, please send a tech.

Telco Support: Please repeatedly perform dozens of nearly random acts that demonstrate your social inferiority to my status as High Priest of Telco.

You: Sure thing!

Telco Support: What kind of computer are you running?

You: I have a desktop and a laptop. What do you recommend for best service?

Telco Support: Arcane and expensive mass-market product with obsolete features, bad support, firewall turned off and never patched, version the vendor no longer ships.

You: By amazing co-incidence, that is exactly the version I am running right here! What luck!

Telco Support: Twiddle many knobs and break lots of working stuff as I tell you to do things that cannot possibly fix a physically damaged line.

You: Sure thing! I like being helped! (be careful, here, you need to pause for appropriate amounts of time after each nonsensical suggestion is tendered so the Telco Rep will not figure out that you are watching TV and eating nachos instead of wasting your time actually doing the things he tells you to do).

You: Well, gee, it still doesn't work, even though I've reinstalled Windows three times now and stuck tender portions of my anatomy in the lightbulb socket as you instructed. What should we do now?

Telco Support: We'll have to send a truck out. It will be there sometime between 2 AM Friday a week from now and 3:15 PM Christmas next year. You will have to stay in the house between those times to let the technician into the house.

You: Sure thing, I love waiting in line! Thanks! You know, it's been such a great pleasure working with you an' all, I'd like to send you some cookies, how can I do that?

Telco Rep: We know that one. Wait for the truck.

You: OK, I'm off to my dentist appointment, I love all the drilling!

Now you wait for the truck to show up. DO NOT LEAVE THE PHONE UNATTENDED UNTIL THE TRUCK SHOWS UP. The truck will not come during the period the telco says it will come. The technician (who is not your enemy, incidentally) will receive a call from the dispatcher that goes like this:

Dispatcher: Some toad in Blooker street says his line's out. Most likely stuffed cheese and salami into his CDROM, but you better go check it out. Here's the number. If nobody answers just forget about it, his problem will most likely go away or he'll forget about it, I'm going to close the ticket now.

Tech: (Calls number)

You: Hello?

Tech: This is Jim from Telco, I got a call about a line being out?

You: Yeah, a squirrel chewed through the line. I can see it out my window.

Tech: Oh, is it FioS? We told purchasing to stop buying the kind insulated with molasses and peanut butter, but they won't listen, they say it is more cost-effective.

You: Yeah, FioS. It's the black jacket kind.

Tech: I'll be right over.

Re:Expected

[Shotgun]

For two semesters? She couldn't get to her classes for a whole semester, and then ponied up the cash for another connectionless semester?

No. This was not the school's 'fault'. If I had missed two DAYS of classes, I would have raised hell all the way up and down the line until someone fixed something somewhere, or I would have found out what the problem was and fixed it myself.

The problem was that this woman was/is a complete dipshit.

Re:Well, Cisco was supposed to teach you the ritua

[JohnBailey]

Aww.. English ISPs are nowhere near as entertaining. Last time I called mine with a problem, when it came to the OS bit, being a Linux user allowed me to cut the usual support script nonsense and go straight to the ordering of the line check. They were even quite happy I was using my own router.

Re:Expected

[RichardJenkins]

Linux can be superior in every other way, but Windows will always work better than Linux *with other Windows machines*. Microsoft guarantees this with the closed nature of their networking protocols.

This means that as long as most people are using windows, it is to the short term advantage of a non-technical user to use Windows also. This has results in the current situation where most everyone uses Windows.

With almost everyone using windows software/hardware/drivers/manual producers can get away with just producing Windows versions.

As Linux Distributions become increasingly usable (ultimately I believe surpassing Windows in usability) these two factors will remain and retard Linux adoption:

* The 'lock in' effect where another Windows machine is the most compatible choice in a world populated with Windows machines
* The 'one size fits most' effect, where people producing anything related to technology can cut corners and only support windows because it's used by almost everyone.

Re:Humor? Entertainment?

[WCguru42]

If you're unfamiliar with any of those topics they are very useful. You have to imagine someone who didn't grow up with computers. If you're an older adult and want to learn how to use those confusing computers that your children always talk about then these are just the sorts of classes you would take.

Or maybe you've been working in a manual labor field where computer knowledge isn't needed. Then you want to move to an office position (a questionable decision at best), you're going to need a basic understanding of computers, the internet, windows, e-mail, word, etc.

Basically, these are not four year universities, these are 2 year craft schools to help someone with a high school education get a better living.

Re:Expected

[kilodelta]

This part got me: "I have no idea how they cope when they rent a car that's different from their own, get a new toaster, or buy a new light switch: the least little difference completely flummoxes them. Stupid might be a harsh, if not an entirely inaccurate term" Simple, they all have common controls that are pretty much in the same places. Take a car for example, steering wheel is always in the same place, gas pedal and brake pedal too. Same with light switches. I think all OS designers should be forced to read Donald Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things" and start from there.

Keyboarding IS a word.

[Petersko]

"OMFG! And is "keyboarding" even a word?"

It appears that "keyboarding" is, in fact, a word.

Perhaps the college in question offers a course on using an online dictionary.

Re:dell and modems

[centuren]

The Comcast CD that came with my Internet self-install officially supported Windows and OSX, so I could install it on my laptop at least -- or so I thought until I tried. It also specifically required Internet Explorer 5 for Mac, a product not available even through the MS website anymore.

Of course, the whole situation was moot. Those install CD-ROMs aren't required to use the modem. I just called Comcast and told them to activate my modem, and I was online in minutes.

Verizon DSL is similarly not limited to Windows. The article actually says that Verizon supports Ubuntu, and that they are going to send over tech support.

This really shouldn't have made news anywhere, it basically amounts to "Woman has trouble setting up her Internet connection, complains to the press before receiving support from her ISP."

Flash is a Big Deal

[WiiVault]

I would like to second the comment about Flash. I absolutely hate it, but it has sadly become the defacto standard for web video. "Normal users" watch a lot of flash video and until Adobe gets their shit together Linux desktop penetration will suffer. I just hope for the death of Flash.

Too Harsh

[WiiVault]

I think you are being a bit harsh, I think many of those classes are exactly what this woman needs. Sure that is low level stuff, but it is only worth one credit, and some of it seems genuinely useful. Notice how the Windows classes include instruction in maintenance? That is something, if taught right that is invaluable to the user. And no I am not anti-Windows trolling, simple maintenance is essential to any computer user.

Re:Expected

[arkhan_jg]

Ah, I see you've worked at my office then.

The key thing to remember when working with people like this is that they have a different way of working with their computer. They might use a computer for the entirety of their working day, but they never actually learn how to use it at all.

What they do is memorise tasks that achieve specific goals. To you and me, we learn how to do an abstract process - like how email works - then adapt that process to fit to whatever we're doing at the time. If we want to do something we haven't done before, we use our standard process of looking it up on google or the help files, and follow the instructions. If we want to find and submit an RMA form, we think 'ah, that's a document. I'll edit and print that in word.' You open word, open the document, then print it to your closest printer, having learned the general process for each - or at least how to look it up. Using a different version or a different printer doesn't phase us, because we know what we're looking for, and just browse around till we find what microsoft called the action this time round.

For them though, they never learn, or want to learn the process. As you say, it's a magic black box. They don't know it's word. They barely know it's a document. What they DO know is that, when they were shown how to do it on the PC they inherited from their predecessor, when they want to process an RMA request they go to the 4th icon along, 2 down on the 'screensaver' and double click. They then go here, here and here and write this and that bit of information in. They then go to the bar at the top, click the big round button, and select the 4th option down, and click the 2nd option. And the piece of paper comes out the printer.

Then their computer breaks. They can't click the 4th icon along, 2nd down any more because the screen is all black. They ring tech support to tell them they can't process RMA forms right now, and they need to do one really urgently, and get a load of gibberish questions about what version of office they're using, and is it in their documents thingie, and can they open it on their neighbours PC or whatever, and what they WANT is someone to come out and fix it, right now, so they can send off this RMA form like usual that the manager told them to send off urgently. What they get is a new computer, and now NOTHING is where it should be. How can I work like this? where's my H: drive button gone? How can I possibly do RMA forms when it's not ANYWHERE on my screensaver?

My solution? Wait for them all to die and be replaced by their children.

yes

[zogger]

I know that, I just thought I had a live dell guy here in the thread, so I was taking advantage of it. I was trying to help a friend who's computer croaked last week, and found her that Dell model, but she needs dialup. I told her to go to import mart and get a usb us robotics model as that should work out of the box, but it still isn't an excuse for dell to not provide dialup support as an option,.

As to ISPs being usually clueless with anything but windows, what else is new. I know mine sent me their handy "install to get on the internet" cd, and I chucked it in the trash, a few dollars waste there on their side, and I TOLD them specifically I wouldn't be needing it in the first place, but they sent it anyway. And I just frikkin hate if you ever have to call them up and the first thing out of Abu's..I mean "Mikes" mouth is "which windows are you running?". This is 2009 now, I think that people can finally be taught what an operating system is and that yes indeedy there is more than one. Car analogy..you call up any joe random car repair place and they just assume you have a belchfire car, because belchifre is the biggest. And the person who wants a repair says "what's an engine?" It's way past time people took the initiative and learned just a little bit more about this thing they are sitting in front of. It really is that ignorant anymore, no different from not knowing what an engine, transmission, tires, etc are. If people can't be bothered to learn that much, just some really basic simple stuff... no computer for them, and who cares, those are the same ones who get rooted within five minutes and become part of botnets and just drive their friends and family nuts forever "fixing" their hosed computer and having to "explain" how to navigate a simple menu.

Now, I am not saying everyone should be an advanced administrator guru, I certainly am not, but jeez loweez, these companies (computer sellers and ISPs) should have been doing more to at least try and educate people and at least try to actually be operating system neutral by now.

And it sure is a slap in the face for dang dell to have "dell recommends Microsoft vista!" on the top of the few ubuntu equipped machines web site pages they have. It's cool they started selling them, but still..get the MS ads off the linux pages. And get that stupid MS sticker off of new hardware, got a new LCD monitor for Christmas, another dang retarded bit of Microsoft advertising stuck on the thing. I just want them to go away and quit being..whatever they are, the big bully. A long time ago I didn't care one way or the other about them, but since some years now, seeing how they have done business and all the weirdness that goes on...I have to admit I think they suck, I wouldn't use a single one of their "products" just on general principles now. Just too slimy, and I hate how thew rest of computerdom always kowtows to them. Just a personal gripe. they could have the best OS in the world and pay me 100 bucks to install it and I still wouldn't do it. I don't support the mafia, the mpaa, the riaa, or microsoft, they all are just too slimy and crooked for me. Different strokes.

Re:Expected

[DeadTOm]

What's really sad is that there's no reason both Dell and Verizon can't contract out to someone that is both willing and capable of supporting Linux systems.

The problem isn't a lack of wanting to find good people that know linux that will work for them, it's finding good people that know linux that are willing to work for the peanuts that they pay their techs. It's pathetic what call centers pay and no self respecting tech is going to work for those wages unless they're in dire need of employment.
On the other hand, there are plenty of guys working in the electronics section at walmart for $7 an hour that would be happy to take the one week class the call center has that "certifies" them and become a help desk tech. Hence, the frustration many of us experience when we call for tech support.

Re:Learning Curve

[Corson]

I agree with you. But, as you can see, they already gave you a 0 score. That's what happens when you criticize Linux on a pro-Linux board. ;)

Re:Expected

[totally bogus dude]

I've definitely noticed formatting changes when using OOo rather than Word, but not enough to really worry me. It certainly would annoy some people though. I think I've even seen cases where the page padding was off enough that a formerly one-page document became two pages.

The worst case I've seen is our timesheet spreadsheet. Functionally it works, however quite a bit of the formatting goes haywire. The timesheet has the day names written vertically spanning a few rows, which OOo doesn't seem to support at all. I also haven't been able to work out how to merge cells in OOo Calc, which should a pretty straightforward thing.

Recently we received a call sheet in Excel format for some EMC hardware. The phone number to call doesn't appear when opened in Calc. I haven't investigated why (it's just a call sheet after all, and I have a VM with XP + Office 2007 handy) but it is definitely not FUD.

As much as I love OOo and use it in preference to MS Office, it definitely isn't 100% compatible.

Never underestimate phone company stupidity

[CustomDesigned]

I have a client who has bellsouth DSL - a business account with a static IP. The ISP owned DSL modem crapped out, and they dutifully sent a technician to replace it. Unfortunately, the new DSL modem is configured like a NAT router to block all incoming connections - and we have no access to it.

I was able to restore email and ssh service via openvpn, but it has been a month, and the client, my boss, and I have tried unsuccessfully to convince half a dozen bellsouth employees that a static IP is not much use with no incoming connections.

At this point, I've advised the client to either downgrade to dynamic IP and demand a refund for the months overpayment, or see if the cable company is any better. I just can't believe how many utterly clueless "tech" people they manage to field.

Re:Expected

[Cytotoxic]

With apologies to Joey, the word is Moo. As in "the point is moo." You know, like what a cow says: "moo". It doesn't mean anything. It's moo.