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He's a Mac, He's a PC, But We're Linux!
davidmwilliams writes "Earlier this year the Linux Foundation launched a competition for budding writers, film makers and just general Linux enthusiasts to make their own grassroots advertisement to compete with Apple's highly-successful 'I'm a Mac' series of adverts. The winner has now been announced."
I've been kinda surprised that with all the tech and science they throw around on that show, that they don't ever mention Linux.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
But The Great Unwashed Masses don't even know what Linux is yet.
The great unwashed masses don't conceptualize the idea of an operating system. This one of the reasons that Microsoft, with it's anti-competitive licensing, was able to gain a monopoly, because they controlled the pre-loads. Even when there was competition, consumers thought in terms of the total product rather than the composition of parts. You bought a Commodore {model name} PC, an Atari {model name} PC, an Apple {model name} PC, etc.
Of course this is perpetuated by the use of the term, "PC", to be synonymous with "a personal computer (PC) running the Windows operating system", which is free marketing for Microsoft.
Linux did its spoof years ago.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
Have you ever tried to call Microsoft or Apple with a question?
Were they able to help you? Or was it easier to post your question to google and find someone else who had the same problem and found a fix?
I have been a Mac, a Microsoft AND and OS2. NEVER has customer service EVER helped with my problems. I guess easy problems that are easily solved are all the help lines are capable of. If it is an easy problem, heck, I have an Internet connection, I know how to type, and I know how to read.
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
Ok, but I'm not a driveling whiny developer enthusiast that needs to have the bazillion levels of freedom that you need to hack the bejeezus out of your computer. I'm a burger flipper, a tire guy, a mechanic, a professional, or a housewife and I just want the stuff to work.
In that case, the bazillion programs available for Windows shouldn't matter -- only the few you need to work. Additionally, the lack of a need for antivirus, and the ease of keeping your system up-to-date and secure, should appeal to you.
In fact, even a package manager and a distribution should benefit you, in the long run. Choosing software supported by the distro means it'll be maintained, likely forever and for free. Using a distro like Debian or Ubuntu, which has separate stable and unstable versions, means that as long as you're on the stable version, all of that software is known to work together -- no "dll hell", no other strange cases of one piece of software causing another to not work.
I don't want to have to make a stupid decision about which distribution I should download
That's why we say "Ubuntu" and move on.
and I don't want to have to answer nine billion technical questions just to get it installed.
I'm sure someone can verify it, but I don't think Ubuntu asks more questions than XP. If you're a professional, you solve this problem by getting it preinstalled.
I want to have that feeling that there is a company that I can blame,
That would be Dell, who is providing you service, if you followed the above option.
I need to have the feeling that there is a group of people that may benefit from my purchase,
That, I really don't get. Since it can be free, why would you need that? If you get it as a product, with someone to blame (the Dell option), then Dell and Canonical both benefit, and some portion of your money goes directly to improving Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is coming the closest to being a product and it's goals are commendable but it is not a mainstream desktop PRODUCT and never will be.
Why not? Putting PRODUCT in all caps (and bold) doesn't make it a valid point. Your actual points here, I think I've refuted.
Just because it's free doesn't mean it is going to be good and just because it costs a lot of money doesn't mean that it's evil.
This is true. However, the fact that it is free, in a truly level market economy, would mean that anything that costs money would have to come with a lot of added value.
As it is, the closest competitor, in the sense of something for which most software is compatible, might be Solaris (and other commercial Unices), but Solaris was recently open sourced -- Linux dominates that market. OS X might count, except their GUI is so proprietary that a truly native OS X app can't be much more easily ported to Linux than a Windows app can.
I'l probably get modded a 0 flame bait for this
I really hope mods stop falling for this tactic.
Hey, mods, I'm about to say something that people might not want to hear! Some people might mod me down for it! You'd better mod me up to compensate!
I'd have modded you overrated, but I actually have something to say.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!