The "I'm Linux" Video Contest | Hacker News Reader

The "I'm Linux" Video Contest

video.linuxfoundation.org

10 pointsmudge21 comments

"Hi, I'm Linux. Lots of stuff will almost work, but not quite, and that's all part of the fun. I can sometimes do WPA but frankly it's going to be easier on both of us if you use WEP. I like to pretend I'm easy-to-use, but you need to be picky about which hardware you run me on - or I might not work. I can auto-update software, but sometimes we'll take a trip to dependency hell which will take hours to recover from - think of it as a form of intense mental workout. I've got a bunch of programs which will almost do what you want, but it won't be long before you're missing your old favourites like Office and Photoshop. There are lots of competing versions of me, and sometimes you'll get dragged into meaningless debates about which is best."

I use Linux every day, but sometimes I get a bit jaded about this kind of thing.

Wow. If my wife were an operating system, this would be her description.

Except for the part about missing your old favourites. I think.

Maybe I should make a video based on your comment...

It's not meant to be a nasty comment (I've been using Linux since 1994) but I've never liked using Linux as a desktop system. Personally I think there's more entertainment to be had from spoofing all these "Hi, I'm [brand name]" videos than actually making serious ones :)

I didn't take it too be nasty. Sometimes things that are challenging are the most satisfying. I certainly wouldn't want a dumbed-down version, even if enabled me to avoid the occasional frustration.

'I use Linux every day, but sometimes I get a bit jaded about this kind of thing.'

Perhaps you should be pickier about your hardware, and select a laptop that ships with your OS.

I have no issues with WPA or suspend, ever. Ubuntu, as a large and major distro with many package sources, doesn't really get dependency hell either.

"you need to be picky about which hardware you run me on - or I might not work" ... "Perhaps you should be pickier about your hardware"

;-)

Do the Mac and Windows guys say that at present?

If not, I don't see any reason why the Linux guy would.

"Do the Mac and Windows guys say that at present?"

You seem to be suffering from a sense-of-humour failure. No, the Mac and Windows guys don't say it. But in my ironic alternative universe, the Mac guy would say something like:

"Hi, I'm the new Mac. I have just one button. Anywhere. Do not try and move the cursor. That's impossible. Instead ... only try to realize the truth."

And the Windows guy would say:

"Hi, I'm a PC. Vista makes me all shiny, which we think is much more important than running with your legacy hardware. Or your favourite software. Or with less than 10Gb of RAM. Good luck with any of that!"

But seriously, why take seriously something which was only ever intended to be a flippant remark?

All good humor contains and element of truth, so I thought I'd mention the same was possible elsewhere. Maybe I should have made the joke first. shrug

I didn't say it was good humour ;)

meh, I bought a desktop that shipped with ubuntu. Changing users makes it crash. My keyboard didn't work. Flash works about 80% of the time.

On my thinkpad, which I installed myself, suspend only works if I disabled the nvidea drivers. It really isn't great yet.

geez--I'm running fedora 9 on an hp laptop. It's a Vista dual-boot rig. Everything works but suspend on closing the lid.

I don't use the Vista side much, but my wife uses a very expensive Sony with vista biz premium on it. Her suspend also (sometimes) crashes. She can't print from our XP home network (I can). She paid for adobe acrobat professional and it never worked on her box.

Of course, fedora 10 is out now and the thought of upgrading gives me the cold sweats...

'Changing users makes it crash'

Wow. Which vendor? What happened when you reported it?

The french one looked fun and well-done, though I couldn't understand what they were saying.

The first one on the page with the music and still images is unintentionally hilarious. They cycle through pictures of people that I guess are involved with Linux, with the caption "I'm Linux". Probably around 95% of the people shown are white men. There is only a single woman.

Well, two points for honesty.

So, does it strike anyone else as the first time "I'm X" makes any sense? You can't be Mac or Windows...because Apple and Microsoft will sic a pack of highly trained attack lawyers on you, if you try. But with Linux you really can be a part of it. Anyone who has ever helped someone on a mailing list is Linux (where "Linux" is as good a mascot for the overall Open Source experience as anything). Anyone who has submitted a patch to their favorite project is Linux. Anyone who has burned a copy of a Ubuntu or Fedora or CentOS or Debian for a friend to try out is Linux.

There are many things you can say about Linux that aren't flattering (m0nty covered them sufficiently already, and though I disagree with many of them, or feel like it's unfair without following up with, "Of course, both Mac and Windows also have an equal or greater number of seriously irritating quirks and flaws, but I already know how to work around those so I don't complain about it."), but Linux is a community, a movement, and a set of freedoms and capabilities that Apple and Microsoft simply can't deliver on. Linux and Open Source is so vastly over-powering in that regard, that it's...umm...I dunno...astonishing to me that so many folks focus on the little nits (without actually doing anything to fix them--since with Linux, you actually have that power). If Linux were less capable than the alternatives, I would understand it better...but there are so many things I do in Linux every day, that would be impossible, require a huge investment in third party tools, or otherwise simply not be as nice on Windows or Mac OS X.

Maybe it's because I've been up all night dredging through PayPal's api docs trying to figure out what version it's at, but as soon as I saw this I thought about a bunch of penguins ordering different things in a Baskin-Robbins. Linux... It's like ice cream. There's a flavor for you.

No its more like you have 300 flavor that have all melted because you couldn't get your wifi and video card to talk.

Except for there are 300 flavors, all named in a foreign language.

>The winner will receive a free trip to Tokyo, Japan to participate in the Linux Foundation Japan Linux Symposium in October 2009.

Cool idea, and a trip to Tokyo sounds nice. But it's hard to get excited about going to a symposium.

I like the one about desktops... since its wrong...OS X has spaces which is the same as desktops http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/spaces.html

I wonder if the Tron Guy will try out:

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Image:Linux2.jpg

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