Comments on: "I don't know what Linux is but I don't like it"

By: Nathan

Nathan — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 08:26:22 +0000

Hey for all you new linuxers out there or if you want to find out a bit about the installation processes of various linux flavors, or just to read more about linux and unix, check out my site bloglinux.org

By: Anne Truitt Zelenka » links for 2008-01-16

Anne Truitt Zelenka » links for 2008-01-16 — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 15:20:53 +0000

[...] The Plenitude of Arboreal Beauty » Blog Archive » “I don’t know what Linux is but I don’t li… How easy it is to give Ubuntu a try. (tags: linux ubuntu operating-systems) [...]

By: tecosystems » links for 2008-01-16

tecosystems » links for 2008-01-16 — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 05:26:09 +0000

[...] The Plenitude of Arboreal Beauty » Blog Archive » “I don’t know what Linux is but I don’t li… “In college, almost everyone has a personal computer. More and more people are using Macs – it seems that 10% of the class of 2007 uses Macs, whereas it appears that roughly half of freshman (class of 2010) are using Macs.” – just 1 datapoint, but still (tags: blogs linux mac osx davidsiegel marketshare penetration) [...]

By: Side effects may include: » Blog Archive » The Nature of the Decision to Use Free Software

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 23:04:55 +0000

[...] most people’s immediate reaction to the proposition of using free software, entitled I Don’t Know What Linux is but I Don’t Like It, I got many interesting comments and put the issue to rest for the time being. However, I take [...]

By: fREeCYCLE

fREeCYCLE — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 17:12:56 +0000

[quote]STOP FIXING WINDOWS FOR PEOPLE!!!

Then they will have to try something better![/quote]

A-men.
After the usual yearly breakdown of my “billing” hours, I find that for the fourth year in a row, my hours lost to non-billable ‘friends & family’ windows issues* has exceed 20% of my total labor time. I’m not suffering this death of a thousand needles for anyone… anymore.

I will gladly DOUBLE that investment to help them (family) switch to a foreign operating system, complete with oodles of learning curves and the inevitable challenges. But HELL WILL FREEZE OVER before I spend another moment fixing someone’s “deliberately shoddy” commercial offerings. The same issues again, and again and again.

I’ll never forget the MCSE seminar, in which the featured speaker opened up with this line while pointing to a projected screenshot of 2000: “This is great stuff folks! You’ll soon be earning more money devising solutions to your solutions than you ever imagined.”

As of Feburary, ‘07 have flatly cut off windows support in my private life, both free and paid. Yes, the commercial support money has gone down… but the quality of my life has risen exponentially!

(and as to the money… who knows…. some of the businesses cut off by this action, keep calling anyway. *One* is now in the process of an OS switch. If one support contract finds it’s way back into my bank, then maybe… just maybe there will be others to follow).

You’ll never know the joy of looking at yet another windows user who can’t even describe their self-inflicted problem … and simply saying “I don’t do Windows. Sorry yours broke”.

By: gmack

gmack — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 19:14:29 +0000

They’ll eventually see the light

By: Robert Schlueter

Robert Schlueter — Wed, 30 May 2007 19:48:32 +0000

I agree with you about open source software completely, it’s a little geeky and not as user friendly as it should be, but it is great software and those involved have made a great contribution to the computing community. I tried Ubuntu for about 24 hours and chickened out and went back to terrible Windows. I don’t like that you can’t see your hard drive. The menu does not show all the installed programs. I probably should have stayed with it longer, most of the problems I had probably would have worked themselves out. Giving up my 400 + window programs was just too much. I still have the disk, maybe I’l give it another shot.

By: Greg M. Johnson

Greg M. Johnson — Tue, 29 May 2007 02:56:30 +0000

I know a bright guy with a PhD in physics. He hadn’t ever seen linux. He asked me if it had any GUI! Can you imagine the kind of monastic life some folks must imagine the linux world must be like?!

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 28 May 2007 05:23:50 +0000

I started using Ubuntu shortly before the official Feisty release and I love it! I’m coming from around 5 years of going through many Linux distros and back and forth to Windows. I consider myself a super-nerd. For a long time I stayed away from “noob” distros until I re-looked at my priorities. I finally ended up on Freespire.
I broke Freespire beyond repair after I attempted to install drivers for both ATI and nVidia in the same system. While attempting to fix it, I discovered that it is nearly impossible to boot it without X!
Next I tried Debian. I jumped through many hoops just to install the dang thing, and it didn’t come with anything (0X, KDE/GNOME) “out-of-box.”
Then I got Ubuntu.

Advantages over other Linuxes (Linices??)
1. Aside from ISO-downloading and waiting, I installed it in maybe 15 minutes, without burning a CD (don’t try this at home unless you really know what you’re doing).
2. After installing from the single CD, my new system came up with a splash screen, X, GNOME, and all the basics that the average desktop user needs.
3. I soon attempted installing nVidia drivers, compiling my own kernel with suspend2, installing Beryl, installing IE6 via ies4linux, and other things that broke some of my old distros. Ubuntu passed with flying colors.

Advantages over Windows
1. Security. I’ve never gotten a virus on Windows, but only thanks to a multitude of security programs. Ubuntu has none and needs none.
2. Faster boot times. I used to use a “heavy” distro and Puppy for different uses. Now I just use Ubuntu since it boots so quickly.
3. Faster in general. It should be slower, considering I run Beryl on it. Nope.
4. More stable. After a few months of using it full-time, I’ve probably had 2 almost-total crashes and maybe 2 more application crashes.
5. More fun. I’m not referring to games, I’m talking about tinkering with Linux itself. The average person probably wouldn’t agree, though.

That’s why I’m using Ubuntu and still using Ubuntu.

By: Howard

Howard — Mon, 28 May 2007 04:53:41 +0000

Cry babies are funny.