NewElitism

I am responding to this post [link] on mainframe.gr. Vangelis Bibakis writes about how the past year was a lost one for Linux and brings up a couple of points. Go on and read them, but be warned: There aren’t really any valid arguments in there. After all, it is written by someone who admittedly uses a ‘W.A.M.P. (Windows Apache Mysql PHP)’ machine to code PHP [link].

The zealots issue (He writes about how Linux zealots install Linux on unsuspecting users’ PCs only for theM to find out later that there is no Photoshop on Linux and they can’t play their Windows games.)

I consider myself a Linux envangelist (I don’t like the term zealot). I have installed Linux for a number of people. I told them before that it is a new OS and that some things won’t work the way they do on Windows. And honestly: Does ‘Joe User’ (as Vangelis calls the average user) REALLY USE Photoshop? And even if he does use it, what are the chances that he is just using it to crop a picture or change the saturation in one every once in a while. YOU DON’T NEED PHOTOSHOP FOR THAT! And since it is probably pirated anyway, I might be doing someone like that a favour.

Playing the current Windows games is the only (!) reason why a home user might still want to have windows. If you don’t tell people about that before installing Linux for them, you are being a plain asshole.
Which Linux ??? (Vangelis goes on about it being difficult to publish software for the different Linux versions or package formats.)

He apparently hasn’t heard about Autopackage [link]. I have installed several programs using this system and it worked flawlessly. As a software vendor you CAN use it to distribute proprietary software across many distributions:

# Does it support commercial software?

The licensing of autopackage is suitable for proprietary software vendors to use (LGPL).

Another point he makes is about a network admin who is happy he ‘learned SuSe’ and then has to work with RedHat and is completely lost. I am not even going to go into that because it is too ridiculous. What network admin DOESN’T know Linux?? And show me one network admin that would have a problem for more than a few minutes because he encounters some GUI-Tools that he isn’t used to.

Bad Marketing

He cites the Fedora Wiki:

“Fedora Core may not be appropriate for use in business-critical applications in your organization�?. 99% of people translate it to: “Find something else, this one is a risk.”

Although I can’t find this particular passage in the Fedora Wiki, I am sure it is massively out of context. I am willing to bet that one of the following sentences reads along the lines of: “If you are looking for a professionally supported business server operating system, you might want to take a look at some of RedHats products. While Fedora is built on mostly the same components and hence shares most characteristics, it focuses more on providing the latest software than you would probably want in an OS for a business-critical server.”

And 99% of people reading the Fedora wiki will understand the cited statement the right way anyway.

“Forum Rage” and the million config files (He claims Linux users in forums are not being helpful enough to Linux newbies and that fixing problems by changing config files is not desirable, because you will have to do it again if you reinstall your system.)

Just take a look at the ‘Absolute Beginners’-section at ubuntuforums.org [link]. Just a quick quote:

Thanks to all for those helpful replies!
Special thanks to slimdog360 for taking the trouble to step me through the Terminal codes! This is the kind of help a knooby kneeds!

[source]

And as for the config files. Don’t even go there. I’ll just say one word: Registry. When you reinstall windows, your settings are usually wiped. Only in rare cases can you convince a program to use it’s old settings. This has mainly to do with the fact that Windows apps are installed all over the place and every single one handles its settings differently (this bit in the USER part of the registry, this bit in a file, this bit int eh LOCAL MACHINE part of the registry). It is virtually impossible to really back up your settings. Which is why MS specifically created a program that collects the settings of MS Office so you can move them. It is ridiculous. On my system I just take my home directory and all my settings are there. And if I want to save the configuration of my tediously tweaked machine I can still make a backup of my /etc directory and restore stuff from there.

Fast release cycles (He complains that upgrading your system twice a year is too much work for ‘Joe User’ and that you don’t want to ‘risk’ your tweaked system in an upgrade. He then compares it to Windows and mentions that it has been MS’ primary OS for 5 years and that this time span allowed users to get used to the interface etc.)

You can’t be serious. Have you even once tried upgrading a debian-based distribution? You generally don’t have to do anything! Just start the upgrade and apt does the rest for you. In rare cases you lose a special hand-tweaked setting here and there but chances are that the distribution has improved in a way that renders your tweaks unnecessary.

And please don’t compare it to upgrading Windows because there is no comparison. With Windows you can be happy if only two or three programs stop working after you upgrade the system. Do you think because MS doesn’t give you anything new for 5 years, it’s a bad idea? You get new features with every upgrade, your settings will still be there and you don’t have to reinstall your programs.

In fact, upgrading you system with apt can in most cases (certainly in ‘Joe Users’ case) be done over your lunch break (given a reasonable internet connection): Start the upgrade, go eat something, come back and continue working. If the upgrade was large (new kernel version for example) you might want to reboot to enjoy the full benefits. Compare that to ANY Windows upgrade you have ever done.

He finishes by saying:

So people, please don’t complain about windows that suck and all that stuff. You know that practically there’s nothing else out there.

I beg to differ: I know that practically there’s the visually sweet MacOS, which is not configurable enough for my liking and the mind-blowing Ubuntu Linux. I have also tested other flavours but Ubuntu suited me best and the community around it is awesome. I have been 100% Linux (no Windows on any of my computers) for over a year now and I am neither ‘Joe User’ nor an expert hacker. I am just someone who spends a lot of time on the computer working, coding, surfing, im-ing, mailing and so on.

What I don’t spend my time on anymore:

• virus scans
• upgrading my virus scanner
• spyware/malware scans
• upgrading my spyware/malware scanner
• installing my system every half year because it’s gone unbearably slow
• going crazy about files that can’t be deleted because ‘they are being used by another programme’
• defragmenting my hard drive
• searching for some ‘freeware’ tool to do something or other
• wondering who knows where I surf and what music I listen to
• worrying if my firewall is really on