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Comment by bigstrat2003 | Hacker News Reader

bigstrat2003

Outdated or not, that mindset was inappropriate then and it's inappropriate today. Granted I don't necessarily expect kids in college to know how to behave, but it isn't cool to be a dick to people just because they use one OS or the other. It's especially sad when you consider that these are a bunch of nerds, who know what it's like to be a social outcast, and then turn around and inflict that on one of their own.

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Fair enough, but this isn't about how cool it was that there were warring factions. There were reasons that the divide existed, and most of the reasons involved the behemoth Microsoft throwing its weight around and trying to bully the world of technology. People who ran Windows were seen as complicit, and in some ways, they actually were.

Especially at the time, saying that both sides were obviously bad people because they had a beef with each other is a little like saying the Dark Side and the Jedi should have just stopped being assholes to each other. It's not that simple.

It wasn't exactly like that. It was cliquey but it wasn't like the crisps and bloods or anything.The windows people were typically either baffled by the Linux people or curious about them. There was a bit more attitude from the Linux side I think, but we're talking more about being sarcastic and mocking rather than hostile. These are late 90s CS students we're talking about here, they were a polite bunch generally.

The idea you could make value judgements about a person based on the operating system on their computer was obviously crazy, even at the time. That said, I think some people genuinely believed Microsoft was evil and people who used/bought their software were irresponsible. A bit like the way environmentalists might look at someone who drives a 6 litre V8 around the suburbs I guess. I personally find it easier to understand the environmentalist and never could get too worked up about "M$ WinBl0wz" but I am pretty sure there were people who felt it was their moral duty to boycott interaction with Microsoft users. However crazy that sounds when written down.

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