Hacker News Reader

Comment by Brakenshire | Hacker News Reader

Slightly surprised by the response, Jitsi seems fine to me. Is it worse than Slack?

I've noticed that a lot of people have an aversion to software that doesn't have a name that's made from English word(s). This is possibly because the most common software out there has this property, and so people subconsciously associate it with quality (exceptions abound, of course, Samsung, Adobe, but I think that you need to reach a certain size to break free from the negative stigma in English-speaking countries).

Come to think of it, this may be why Linux is still seen as an outsider to non-technical people, as though it were less of a serious product than Windows (which has an English word as a name).

Adobe is a an English word though. More people are probably now aware of the software than the bricks, but it has a root there.

The name Linux is not the issue, the fact that it isn't a product might be.

Think of Windows or macOS, pick a version, you can picture what it looks like and what apps run on it. Linux isn't a specific product. You can't install Linux 10.15. You might install a specific kernel version, or a specific distro version, but Linux is more of an assemblage of packages rather than one cohesive end-product. And it's not as easy to picture Linux in your mind. One Linux user will use default Ubuntu installation, one Linux user will boot directly to terminal because window managers, and other Linux user will be using Android which is completely different case as well.

Or Skype? ICQ?

This thread is quite idiotic.

Or “google”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com