When I assert that Linux isn't Ford, I'm not making a statement about the quality of either product. I'm asserting that Ford is a much, much more better known product.
I haven't been talking about the qualities or virtues or other attributes of Linux.
I have been saying that more people deserve to know about and use Linux, but that Linux has been ill-served by the PR campaign, such as it is, waged by the Linux community for 15 years or so.
This effort typically emphasizes two attributes; the FOSS ideology and free beer nature of Linux. My argument is that neither of those attributes have much appeal to people not already part of the community. (Since Windows is on machines when people buy them, it also appears to be free.)
I used Linux on my desktop for the better part of a decade. (I'm on a Mac now.) I've followed the community closely for almost all those years. The responses in this thread essentially duplicate comments I read 10 years ago. Many members of the Linux community view Linux as a cause, and have made an emotional commitment to it. They apparently see any criticism of it, however positive, as a near-religious attack on their faith.
Linux is a great OS, with still greater potential. The faithful should work to extend its reach by extolling its practical virtues and keeping their mouths shut about the wonders of FOSS. Here's a truism: People who wouldn't recognize source code if it fell on them do not care if their software is open or closed.
Specific suggestions:
1. The interface lacks polish. It looks amateurish, even next to Windows. Those who sell Linux ought to get together and hire some experts to tweak KDE and Gnome until both look like something anyone who spent $2000 on a machine would be proud to use. There is no reason why Linux can't look as good as OS X. It doesn't. It doesn't look as good as Windows. First impressions count, especially in software.
2. Someone needs to write a program that can be run online or from a CD that analyzes a machine and tells the user which hardware components will and will not work with the distribution in question. Nothing kills someone's interest in Linux faster than finding out their printer or their sound card or their wireless card won't work after they've installed Linux. We need a routine that tells users what works and what doesn't before they install. The typical online hardware compatibility lists are useless for those who don't know what's in their hardware, i.e., most people.
Yeah, yeah, Santayana. Five years from now, everyone is going to be a Linux admin and every office worker on the planet will be using emacs instead of Word. Right.
>> And you are implying that open office can not meet those expectations.
I made no such implication. Stop being paranoid.
Your, umm, defensiveness exemplifies the behavior that helps prevent Linux and all of free software from gaining greater mainstream acceptance. Rather than focus on the product that's delivered, there's a focus on the mindset and the ideology of its developers. Criticism is rejected out of hand as heretical. Suggestions are not entertained because they imply that FOSS is less than perfect.
The response to my comments here is typical. I suggest that it might be time to consider new approaches to marketing Linux to the mainstream. I'm attacked by people who misread, misinterpret and misconstrue my remarks. People go off on unproductive and distracting tangents, like this silliness about Open Office. Typical for the Asperger's convention that is Slashdot, people believe they thwart an entire argument when they point to one mistaken minor detail.
If the Linux and FOSS community are so ready to reject well-meaning suggestions from people who support them, then no wonder they are behind the curve.
The teacher's letter and the response were both ill-informed and hysterical. However, the Linux community has more responsibility for the teacher's lack of awareness of Linux than she does. She's the kind of mainstream person they need to be talking to. Sadly, much of that community is happy just to call her "ignorant" and move on.
Frankly, the way to win schools and school teachers to Linux is to give them PC's loaded with Linux, not to hand out Linux CD's. No school I know of is going to allow students to install Linux on school hardware without permission.
Linux admin skills represent a subset of a profession that only a tiny minority of all students will ever occupy.
To repeat, yet again, most employers expect and assume new employees already know how to use Windows and Office. Knowing Linux, and not Windows, won't get you hired.
A single personal anecdote can't override reality, even on Slashdot.
A quick look at the OpenOffice site shows they now gloss over that heritage, but the fact is that it began life as an attempt to mimic Office. I was there.
Yes, I know emacs and vi are available on Windows. Do you know anyone working in a white-collar job for someone who expected them to know how to use either one?
Here's the point, which you seem to have missed even though it's been repeated over and over: Employers expect and assume that new employees will know how to use Windows and Office. If you are interviewing for a white-collar job and tell the employer you don't know Windows, do you think you have much of a chance?
You market FOSS products by forgetting about the FOSS bit. Forget about all the kernel and X business. Market software, not FOSS. No one outside the community cares. They care what software does, not how it does it.
OS X has all that -- a kernel, a windowing system, etc. It's just as complicated as any Linux distribution and Apple never makes any of that part of its marketing and they seem to be doing just fine.
You can't succeed at marketing Linux if you believe you need to run prospective users through a course in OS design first.
Then, someone decides to market a particular flavor of Linux. All the different distributions are confusing, and dilute the brand, just as would happen if there were scores of different versions of Windows or OS X on the market.
That kind of decision is not a "we" decision, it is not a community decision. It is a decision for the company selling or giving away that distribution.
What GUI's were you using pre-Windows, i.e, the early 1980's?
Regardless, it's irrelevant to the issue of popularizing Linux. The fact is that OpenOffice and other projects are cloning Microsoft products, which represents an acknowledgment that Microsoft, not FOSS, is determining user expectations. Otherwise, Word would behave just like emacs.
Don't shudder. If you don't market, no one knows you exist.
I don't believe FOSS is inherently limited in how it markets its products or how successful that marketing might be. I think the teacher's letter is just one piece of evidence that FOSS has failed to counter the notion that Linux is tainted software, or that it can't be any good because it's free.
Some issues that hold Linux back are out of its control, like proprietary drivers. Others are not, like the sophomoric notion that Linux users are smarter and better because they use Linux.
Finally, we need to remember that choice of software isn't that big a deal to many, many people. They bought a machine and Windows is on it. End of story for them. They don't want to talk about software any more than they want to talk about plumbing fixtures A lot of people will put up with a lot of crap before they even think about abandoning Windows.
Having been the guy who decided what software people were stuck using, I agree.
However, that does not negate my point that employers expect, and assume, that new hires knows how to use Office. That's the reason Eecol Electric can deploy OpenOffice.
My point is precisely that people have been ignoring that argument, and others, for the last 15 years.
Your response simply says that people are making a mistake of they don't save money. I agree. But if that fact has potency, why is almost everybody still using Windows?
Distinguish between the success of Linux as software and the failure of the effort to get people to use Linux.
Then, all to the better. You've cited a benefit of Linux that's distinct from the free software/free beer argument.
Remember, I've not been arguing that Linux has failed, only that the way it's been pitched as failed.
It's worth noting, however, that Office has been allowed to define how an office suite is supposed to look and behave. If OpenOffice wasn't an Office clone, would Eecol Electric use it?
OpenOffice is a clone of Office explicitly created to provide a free alternative to the Microsoft product. So, sure, users can easily transfer from OpenOffice to Office. But, not so much from emacs or vi or other typical GNU and Unix tools.
My point is that for 15 years the Linux community has been trying to get normal people to use Linux by talking about freedom, free as in software and free as in price.
That hasn't worked very well. Maybe it's time to reexamine assumptions and plot a new course.
>>...why should a company that's not in the business of word processing pay good money for a program with lots of features they don't need?
No reason why they should. But if the only things that make Linux attractive are free clones of MS software, then that's damning Linux with faint praise.
Linux has many attractions, but people seem to keep beating on the same dead horses that most people don't care about.
>>... students shouldn't be taught to one particular piece of software at a basic level.
Well, you need to decide on what software you're going to install. You're not suggesting that schools force students to use Office one day, Open Office the next, and emacs on the other days?
Anyway, that doesn't answer the question of why should anyone adopt Linux, aside from its ideology and its low cost.
Slashdot Mirror
Photographing military installations is a crime in many countries, as is publishing maps of areas that include those installations.
Not to say that is right, but their employment by a GPS company was probably peripheral to the arrests.
When I assert that Linux isn't Ford, I'm not making a statement about the quality of either product. I'm asserting that Ford is a much, much more better known product.
I haven't been talking about the qualities or virtues or other attributes of Linux.
I have been saying that more people deserve to know about and use Linux, but that Linux has been ill-served by the PR campaign, such as it is, waged by the Linux community for 15 years or so.
This effort typically emphasizes two attributes; the FOSS ideology and free beer nature of Linux. My argument is that neither of those attributes have much appeal to people not already part of the community. (Since Windows is on machines when people buy them, it also appears to be free.)
I used Linux on my desktop for the better part of a decade. (I'm on a Mac now.) I've followed the community closely for almost all those years. The responses in this thread essentially duplicate comments I read 10 years ago. Many members of the Linux community view Linux as a cause, and have made an emotional commitment to it. They apparently see any criticism of it, however positive, as a near-religious attack on their faith.
Linux is a great OS, with still greater potential. The faithful should work to extend its reach by extolling its practical virtues and keeping their mouths shut about the wonders of FOSS. Here's a truism: People who wouldn't recognize source code if it fell on them do not care if their software is open or closed.
Specific suggestions:
1. The interface lacks polish. It looks amateurish, even next to Windows. Those who sell Linux ought to get together and hire some experts to tweak KDE and Gnome until both look like something anyone who spent $2000 on a machine would be proud to use. There is no reason why Linux can't look as good as OS X. It doesn't. It doesn't look as good as Windows. First impressions count, especially in software.
2. Someone needs to write a program that can be run online or from a CD that analyzes a machine and tells the user which hardware components will and will not work with the distribution in question. Nothing kills someone's interest in Linux faster than finding out their printer or their sound card or their wireless card won't work after they've installed Linux. We need a routine that tells users what works and what doesn't before they install. The typical online hardware compatibility lists are useless for those who don't know what's in their hardware, i.e., most people.
Yeah, yeah, Santayana. Five years from now, everyone is going to be a Linux admin and every office worker on the planet will be using emacs instead of Word. Right.
Once more we see a member of the community using the word "stupid" in regard to a person who said something he disagrees with.
You wonder why people aren't flocking to Linux? You go out of your way to insult someone who supports Linux.
>> And you are implying that open office can not meet those expectations.
I made no such implication. Stop being paranoid.
Your, umm, defensiveness exemplifies the behavior that helps prevent Linux and all of free software from gaining greater mainstream acceptance. Rather than focus on the product that's delivered, there's a focus on the mindset and the ideology of its developers. Criticism is rejected out of hand as heretical. Suggestions are not entertained because they imply that FOSS is less than perfect.
The response to my comments here is typical. I suggest that it might be time to consider new approaches to marketing Linux to the mainstream. I'm attacked by people who misread, misinterpret and misconstrue my remarks. People go off on unproductive and distracting tangents, like this silliness about Open Office. Typical for the Asperger's convention that is Slashdot, people believe they thwart an entire argument when they point to one mistaken minor detail.
If the Linux and FOSS community are so ready to reject well-meaning suggestions from people who support them, then no wonder they are behind the curve.
The teacher's letter and the response were both ill-informed and hysterical. However, the Linux community has more responsibility for the teacher's lack of awareness of Linux than she does. She's the kind of mainstream person they need to be talking to. Sadly, much of that community is happy just to call her "ignorant" and move on.
Frankly, the way to win schools and school teachers to Linux is to give them PC's loaded with Linux, not to hand out Linux CD's. No school I know of is going to allow students to install Linux on school hardware without permission.
We're discussing OpenOffice within a discussion of why efforts to popularize Linux by touting its FOSS roots and its free availability have failed.
I said nothing about the virtues of Open Office, only that Microsoft Office has set expectations for what an office suite is.
So what?
Linux admin skills represent a subset of a profession that only a tiny minority of all students will ever occupy.
To repeat, yet again, most employers expect and assume new employees already know how to use Windows and Office. Knowing Linux, and not Windows, won't get you hired.
A single personal anecdote can't override reality, even on Slashdot.
I implied nothing. I said emacs and vi skills were not easily transferable to Office.
A quick look at the OpenOffice site shows they now gloss over that heritage, but the fact is that it began life as an attempt to mimic Office. I was there.
I owned and Amiga, as well, I've owned several Macs.
The first Amiga was released in 1985.
The first Mac was released in 1984.
The first Windows release was in 1983.
First Windows, then Mac, then Amiga.
No one has said Microsoft invented the GUI. I've only pointed to the fact that Open Office began as a deliberate clone of Office.
Yes, I know emacs and vi are available on Windows. Do you know anyone working in a white-collar job for someone who expected them to know how to use either one?
Here's the point, which you seem to have missed even though it's been repeated over and over: Employers expect and assume that new employees will know how to use Windows and Office. If you are interviewing for a white-collar job and tell the employer you don't know Windows, do you think you have much of a chance?
You market FOSS products by forgetting about the FOSS bit. Forget about all the kernel and X business. Market software, not FOSS. No one outside the community cares. They care what software does, not how it does it.
OS X has all that -- a kernel, a windowing system, etc. It's just as complicated as any Linux distribution and Apple never makes any of that part of its marketing and they seem to be doing just fine.
You can't succeed at marketing Linux if you believe you need to run prospective users through a course in OS design first.
Then, someone decides to market a particular flavor of Linux. All the different distributions are confusing, and dilute the brand, just as would happen if there were scores of different versions of Windows or OS X on the market.
That kind of decision is not a "we" decision, it is not a community decision. It is a decision for the company selling or giving away that distribution.
>> ... any teacher as ignorant as this one...
That's an example of how the Linux community turns off prospective users.
Explain to this teacher why she is misinformed about Linux and you might win a convert. Tell her she is stupid and you win an enemy.
My guess is you were interviewing for a tech job, not a mainstream white-collar job.
What GUI's were you using pre-Windows, i.e, the early 1980's?
Regardless, it's irrelevant to the issue of popularizing Linux. The fact is that OpenOffice and other projects are cloning Microsoft products, which represents an acknowledgment that Microsoft, not FOSS, is determining user expectations. Otherwise, Word would behave just like emacs.
Don't shudder. If you don't market, no one knows you exist.
I don't believe FOSS is inherently limited in how it markets its products or how successful that marketing might be. I think the teacher's letter is just one piece of evidence that FOSS has failed to counter the notion that Linux is tainted software, or that it can't be any good because it's free.
Some issues that hold Linux back are out of its control, like proprietary drivers. Others are not, like the sophomoric notion that Linux users are smarter and better because they use Linux.
Finally, we need to remember that choice of software isn't that big a deal to many, many people. They bought a machine and Windows is on it. End of story for them. They don't want to talk about software any more than they want to talk about plumbing fixtures A lot of people will put up with a lot of crap before they even think about abandoning Windows.
Having been the guy who decided what software people were stuck using, I agree.
However, that does not negate my point that employers expect, and assume, that new hires knows how to use Office. That's the reason Eecol Electric can deploy OpenOffice.
My point is precisely that people have been ignoring that argument, and others, for the last 15 years.
Your response simply says that people are making a mistake of they don't save money. I agree. But if that fact has potency, why is almost everybody still using Windows?
Distinguish between the success of Linux as software and the failure of the effort to get people to use Linux.
Then, all to the better. You've cited a benefit of Linux that's distinct from the free software/free beer argument.
Remember, I've not been arguing that Linux has failed, only that the way it's been pitched as failed.
It's worth noting, however, that Office has been allowed to define how an office suite is supposed to look and behave. If OpenOffice wasn't an Office clone, would Eecol Electric use it?
OpenOffice is a clone of Office explicitly created to provide a free alternative to the Microsoft product. So, sure, users can easily transfer from OpenOffice to Office. But, not so much from emacs or vi or other typical GNU and Unix tools.
My point is that for 15 years the Linux community has been trying to get normal people to use Linux by talking about freedom, free as in software and free as in price.
That hasn't worked very well. Maybe it's time to reexamine assumptions and plot a new course.
>> ...why should a company that's not in the business of word processing pay good money for a program with lots of features they don't need?
No reason why they should. But if the only things that make Linux attractive are free clones of MS software, then that's damning Linux with faint praise.
Linux has many attractions, but people seem to keep beating on the same dead horses that most people don't care about.
>> ... students shouldn't be taught to one particular piece of software at a basic level.
Well, you need to decide on what software you're going to install. You're not suggesting that schools force students to use Office one day, Open Office the next, and emacs on the other days?
Anyway, that doesn't answer the question of why should anyone adopt Linux, aside from its ideology and its low cost.