I couldn’t help but read this article and see nothing but errors upon errors.  This follows right along with my last article, ‘Linux Needs To Change! So They Tell Me‘. As long as I see something like this posted that isn’t accurate for the most part, I’d be doing a disservice to this community by not correcting the errors. So, you can expect more articles like the one to follow in the future from me as I see a need for them.

The author listed the various points for the article in numbered sections from 1 to 10. I’ll go down his list as well.

1 – Lack of Leadership and Direction

“Think of Microsoft, the image of Bill Gates’ lopsided smile comes to mind. Think of Apple, you see Steve Jobs giving an enthralling presentation to a bunch of rich people. Think of Linux, whom do you see? Linus Torvalds? Richard Stallman? Or Shuttleworth? The truth is no one. Since the beginning, Linux has always been a scattered effort and it still is. Whenever non-geeks think of technology, they need to see someone they can look up to, someone leading at the front. Instead, the name Linux has become synonymous with diet coke-guzzling nerds who can fix any computer in a minute.”

Right away he’s doing what every writer does, he’s drawing some kind of parallel with the leadership of other operating systems/companies, and Linux. If you know anything at all about me, you know I want to instantly write off his whole post based on that alone. I’ll forge on though.

He asks, “Who do you see?” I see a rich community filled with many developer leads and prominent people who have gained such on pure merit alone.

Then he goes on and talks about how the Linux name is synonymous with diet cola guzzling nerds who can fix a computer in a minute. That’s funny, since outside of the actual tech community (full of diet cola guzzling people, regardless of operating system) not too many people know of Linux. What does that have to do with a role model though? He’s jumping around here.

When I think of either of the other operating systems I think of non-free and closed source, rarely, if at all, do I think of the figureheads behind them.

His next point he invalidates it himself right at the start.

“Besides lacking a proper role model to look up to, Linux also lacks direction. People contribute, but they don’t know how and where to contribute; hence they end up making distros like Hannah Montana Linux. The open-source community is really vast; however, it needs proper leadership to unify people and motivate them. For example, look at the work Android has done. Android was Linux before its inception, Google brought together all the devs, even gave them incentives, and finally came out with a mind-blowing product. The same can be said about Mozilla, but Linux on the other hand is too scattered. Developers make applications according to ‘their needs’ not the users’ needs. It’s time someone makes a stand and gives developers a sense of direction. Linux really needs a Steve Jobs, albeit a nicer one.”

People don’t know how to contribute, but they know how to build a distribution? Is he serious?

This community needs motivation? It’s had what for 20 years then? That’s just for the kernel alone I should add.

Then again he draws that parallel to another operating system. It’s a safe thing to do to cover up the flaws when discussing this topic. But to the point, they did not bring together anyone, they dumped tons of money into it, built it, and everyone else saw dollar signs. That’s the success story on a whole for that operating system.

I won’t even discuss in detail the fact that he slammed developers of this community with a completely false statement for a whole.

How can anyone even try to compare something as unique as the FLOSS community with a business entity. It’s impossible to attempt to. It’s even more impossible to use a company’s hierarchy as a benchmark for this kind of community structure. Also, each and every aspect has it own well known leadership.

2 – Lack of Advertising

At this point I had to wonder what this individual really knows, and then understands about Linux, and a GNU/Linux Based Free Libre Open Source Operating System, with what he comes out with next.

“Can’t blame Linux on this one. Advertising is the prerequisite of getting a product noticed; however, Linux is not as rich as Apple orMicrosoft . Instead, Linux relies on word of mouth publicity; which, to an extent works, but doesn’t get the expected results. It’s time individual distributions take notice of this problem and invest some cash in the area. If that’s not possible, then why not launch a pledge drive and collect funds for marketing? Something less creepy than what Wikipedia did? Furthermore, Linux should not be promoted as a whole product much like IBM was doing (Remember the Linux is everywhere ad?). Instead, individual distros like Ubuntu and openSUSE should make quality adverts and put them out there, showing what features they offer and how they’re better than Windows and Mac.”

If you notice, he first discussed that there’s a definite lack of leadership, then he discusses how individual distributions should put out their own advertising, thus competing, thus having different leadership. It definitely negates his very first reason.

IBM did exactly what IBM needed to do for a corporate entity. It was a whole product for IBM, just as RHEL is for Red Hat and SUSE is/was for Novell/SUSE.  Also, The Linux Foundation is all about the kernel only, and it’s mainly corporate driven, not end-user driven. All major corporate sponsored and developed distributions make the majority of their money from the enterprise market. They do well at it too. These companies do not venture out into a market where quite a number of others have tried to and couldn’t profit in them. Instead, they stick with what they know will further their bottom line, and GNU/Linux benefits from it greatly.

openSUSE is a community based distribution sponsored by the former Novell, now it’s strictly a part of SUSE I do believe. If it entered a market, and advertised,  it would be in direct conflict/competition with the very product the company is trying to sell. No logic to this one.

Ubuntu, no matter what anyone says is a platform for Canonical. Canonical like every other company in our community that wants to make money is going after the enterprise market mainly. The end-user market is only a sideline in hope for residual funds is my guess.

Then finally, there’s that parallel again, and proving it’s better? A distribution shouldn’t focus on proving it’s better than anything else. That’s poor advertising. The product is itself, nothing else that it has to compare to.

3 – Too many choices, too many distributions

“Enter the world of Linux. We’ve got Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, Mint, Slackware, Arch, Elementary OS, PCLinuxOS… we’ve got a lot of choices for you. Does Apple offer that many choices? No. Instead, Apple makes one Snow Leopard, and that’s it. Linux and Microsoft on the other hand keep giving their users the much-overrated ‘freedom of choice’. This is where the Paradox of Choice comes into play. What this means is, whenever the user/consumer is given too many choices, it leads to poor decision-making or failure to make any decision at all. The cause of this paradox is attributed to rational ignorance and more commonly analysis paralysis. The concept has been studied by many researchers including more prominent ones like Barry Shwartz, Sheena Iyengar and Mark R Lepper.

The analysis paralysis is more pronounced in cases where a particular user wants to start using Linux. She Googles a bit about Linux and comes across a concept called distributions. She gets excited about the amount of choices Linux offers. However, owing to the huge amount of distributions out there, she has a difficult time choosing the right one to start with. She then asks the question in a forum or Twitter, and gets 5 different responses from 5 different people, leaving her utterly confused.

Taking cue from this and many such situations, developers should simply stop making new distributions; especially the bad or bizarre ones. Instead, they should focus on contributing to existing and popular distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora. It is obvious that Linux needs some healthy competition from within, but looking at the sheer number of Linux distributions out there, the situation is anything but chaotic. This also reminds me of a hilarious article I came across the other day, which reports that the number of Linux-based distributions has surpassed the number of users. A joke of course, but it does remind developers that it’s time to change their priorities. Usually it’s crowded at the top; however, in the Linux world there’s an ample amount of room. ”

To fix a mistake of his, and I’m going to have to mention it by name, Mac OS X is not just ‘Snow Leopard’, it has been Kodiak (Beta), Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, and currently, Lion. It’s also had quite significant changes throughout it’s product life.

Referring to the ‘Paradox of Choice’ doesn’t work here, at all. I can name hundreds of examples of choice in any grocery store, in regard to cereals, soups, breads, meats, potatoes, vegetables, pickles, etc, and consumers do well. If he had actually meant what he said in his advertising point he wouldn’t have discussed this, at all. Brand recognition and comfort with it is everything. That comes from good advertising and a good product. Simple.

To point out the most obvious though, if our community fails in advertising how does it reach end-consumers on such a scale that they’re overwhelmed by choice? Both can’t be true. How did they hear about it? Where did they go to get the information? If they’re so computer literate that they’re willing to install an operating system on their own, surely they can understand choice and differentiate between what appeals to them and what doesn’t?

4 – Too many misconceptions

“Fact: You can’t watch Jersey Shore and be a Linux user at the same time.

The target audience for Linux has always been geeks, nerds and hackers. Ubuntu however, has managed to expand Linux desktop’s outreach, and has been somewhat successful so far. However, whenever a Windows user is told about Linux, he always gives you that weird puzzled look. And forget asking a Mac user about Linux, he’s way too intoxicated to ever return from Steve’s Apple factory. People come up with all sorts of reasons why the products ‘they use’ are the best. Arguing with them is futile, unless you are a debate expert like Christopher Hitchens. Being a Linux user makes u look like a 3-eyed monster in a crowded bus. Never mind, it’s no use tackling morons. Do share your experiences in the comments section if you’ve met people like these.”

I’ve never known of anyone that uses our operating system being treated as he’s mentioning, or looked upon in that way. Not in public anyway. Maybe at times online, but people do that stuff for every single thing online. That doesn’t make it right, but makes it common for just about everything, so it’s circumspect to point it out for one specific area. Then he himself goes on to slur users of the other operating systems calling them morons. Odd that is.

Also, he brought up other operating systems again. He just can’t seem to let our operating system shine on its own.

He doesn’t discuss any real misconceptions though. He only discusses personal views about people, nothing more. No meat. So I guess other than that, there’s absolutely no misconceptions about it.

5 – Specific requirments

“Windows has been around for a really long time. Long enough to make people completely dependent on applications developed for their platform alone. There are FOSS alternatives to almost any proprietary software out there, but most of the users want the official stuff and not the ‘clones’. Quite ironically, many newbies also hold a misconception that Wine is an emulator. What can I say? Go suck on your stupid software!”

Now he belittles people, and their preference with, “What can I say, go suck on your software.”

He talks about advertising, getting the message out. this is just another example of what good advertising does, and shows he doesn’t realise that, and is just saying the same things other people have at this point. People also use what they know and have available to them. If they knew the alternatives, and had them only, they’d use them.

6) Support

“Even though last week, we wrote an irritably long article on getting support on Linux, there are still a lot of Linux users who throw in the towel when faced with the slightest of glitches. A sizable amount of people just aren’t comfortable using forums and IRC. They want some guy on the telephone who can magically ‘fix’ their computer. And reading the manual… who does that these days?”

He didn’t do his research on this topic, and especially this part. Canonical/Ubuntu offers support.

7 – Piracy

“If you think piracy is just Microsoft’s problem then think again. Piracy is probably the biggest problem Linux is facing right now. Don’t believe me? There are practically millions of people in the world, especially in third world nations, who cannot afford a Microsoft license. So, for them, paying 2-4 Dollars for a pirated copy of the latest and greatest version of Windows is nothing new. Many of them even get it for free, off the Internet. If you ask these people about Linux, they’ve a better excuse for not switching – “If I can get a copy of the latest version of Windows, for practically no cost, why should I go for Linux?” Can’t blame them either. It’s curious how Microsoft, a company that has invented so many restrictive technologies, has fallen flat on its face when it comes to curbing piracy.”

Please, don’t use other operating system’s problems, or anything to do with them as a reason for anything with our operating system, and community.

I’d like to know where he obtained this information that piracy is this operating system’s biggest problem. I have never heard such a bold statement be made before.

About another operating system being pirated and thus ours not being used, I don’t believe it. I’ve yet in many years had someone tell me that they wouldn’t use it because they could get a pirated copy of the other operating system. The only time I’ve heard that is from members of this community using it as an excuse for why people are not using it on a large scale.

8 – Too many changes

“[2009]

GNOME fan to a KDE user: I really love GNOME; it’s incredibly snappy, clean, minimalistic… much better than the half-baked KDE4 interface.

KDE fan smirks and walks away

[2011]

GNOME fan to KDE user: Wow look! There’s my new GNOME 3! *click click* Here’s the new shell, *click click* here’s the new menu *click click* Oh wait… where’s the minimize button? Why is there so much padding? Why did they do this? Why? …

Moral of the story: Too many changes = pissing off loyal friends.

I’m sure there’s a chunk of Ubuntu loyalists who are switching to Mint, once the next version comes out. Although these changes are moving the desktop forward, there are many people who are never willing to accept any radical changes. Try this: make a seasoned IE6 user try out Firefox 4 for a while… he won’t ever be convinced that Firefox is better and instead he’ll revert back to IE6.”

Again, another parallel in regard to another operating system. This time with a browser.

I’ll use that this time though, he made his own point completely invalid. He showed that it’s not specific to just this community. If it was, the person would not be stuck at using an older version of the browser.

Also, major distributions are in no way lacking for a user-base, at all. That’s regardless of any changes wrought.

9 – Hardware issues.

“Despite the best efforts of Canonical, Red Hat and Novell, Linux desktop isn’t as user-friendly as Windows or Mac. Most of the problems come from hardware rather than the software itself. There’s nothing the Linux desktop can do about this situation except work hard on reverse-engineering proprietary drivers and come up with their open-source alternatives. Besides the hardware problem, there are many areas Linux can improve upon. Many of these improvements are needed in the User Interface (UI). Also, apart from becoming noob friendly, Ubuntu has to give people strong reasons to make a switch. The general mentality amongst neophytes is – Why fix if it isn’t broken?”

What? No really, what?

While some things are still reverse engineered, most drivers are written for the kernel specifically, to the point where the kernel even allows non-free blobs so it can get functionality. Hardware issues are becoming less of an issue by the day. If anything is an issue it’s hardware that’s just been released, or hardware that’s very old and uncommon, is my experience.

I had to stop and look for a moment when I noticed that the topic went from hardware issues to the user interface. Quite a turn that was. That could have had its own section and replaced point six. 🙂

I’ve used this operating system for a long time, my family has used it too and they’ve had no problems at all with the user interface. I noticed though that there was a definite lack of information on what exactly is wrong with the interface, and where? A DE? A wm? Some application? Where? I’ll tell you where, nowhere. It works fine. But doesn’t this also go against the whole change point he made as well? 🙂

10 –

“Are you in the mood for some Microsoft bashing? Here we go. To be really honest, Microsoft is Linux’s biggest problem. Almost every shortcoming the Linux desktop faces, one can easily blame Microsoft for that. It’s no Wikileaks-worthy secret that Microsoft lobbies hard with governments to keep their no 1 spot intact. Furthermore, Microsoft makes sure no open-source software gets in its way by coming up with propaganda ads like this. Then, they set up a shiny new web page showcasing their ‘dedication’ towards open-source. The heading on the page says – “We value openness as a company”. Their C.E.O Steve Ballmer on the other hand, calls Linux a cancer. How much more hypocritical and phony can u get Microsoft? Stop it already. If you’re a Microsoft fanatic and a staunch believer in their “We’re not evil, they are” Billosophy, do take a look at this article: A Brief History of Microsoft FUD“

A point that is all about another company and its tactics, seriously? Then he used a word that I despise to no end. I’m not even giving this final point any more of my time. It’s completely useless in this discussion. Exactly why I also left out the title of this point as well.

There we go again, another person pretty well copying what others have said. Blaming, or discussing other operating systems, and doing little, or nothing to actually find out the truth. You can verify that with his lack of knowledge about Ubuntu Home Support alone, let alone all the other erroneous points made.

Speak up, let people know that this operating system is thriving. The desktop market is growing. The growth is a positive thing, and continues to be that! Tell them that they need to stop spreading false claims otherwise and to focus on valid points that actually encourage contribution and participation which creates the growth they’re concerned about.

Keep your stick on the ice…

Landor