Linux vs. Linux Users
shamusyoung.com
shamusyoung.com
Of all the quite many Linux users I know none would be interested in your, quite funny, article. Its just no on the radar to be interested in such articles if youve been using Linux for more than two-three months.
The problem is this fanboism and making choice of OS some kind of life-style choice and then we have flamewars like in Month Pythons Life of Brian when "Peoples Liberation party and "party for Peoples Liberation" fight.
And there will always be people who see an article on /. or reddit and will go leave an incendiary comment on a weblog after having only read the title.
I think this is less of a commentary on Linux users than on Humanity.
If you really don't feel there is some problem with the Linux community, you probably aren't spending enough time acting as a member. All the Linux users I know personally would react reasonably to this article. Also all the Linux people I know would probably enjoy reading this article since it's funny.
With that said I don't feel this is a Linux-specific issue. There are many communities that have problems seeming hostile over seemingly insignificant reasons. As a person who likes to try and help people, it makes me upset to watch almost 100% of questions in programming IRC channels get bogged down in a ridiculous never-ending trail of condescending "Why?" questions. Linux elitism and condescending IRC help and etc. are all the norm for tech people but stuff like this will help turn away new participants as fast as anything else. In other communities I see people getting vitriolic over music genres or art styles.
As you mention, there are tons of smart, sensible Linux users, just like there are tons of helpful programmers. But invariably, the angriest or most opinionated people in a community will start posting the most and will end up making their entire scene look a little uglier. Sites like HN that incorporate user moderation are helping. The other thing that helps is simply when more level-headed and polite people put themselves out there to push their semi-neutral agendas. I know I personally have stopped a few "Why are you even THINKING about that!?" trains by simply answering the user's original question when I was able.
"Windows 8 is a mess and while Windows 7 is pretty spiffy, it’s also a hundred dollars. Given the shape of the economy right now, lots of people would probably be willing to endure a bit of a learning curve to save that kind of money."
The economic advantages of Linux/BSD based operating systems include the ability to use older hardware for longer and free/libre application software that may be adequate depending on use cases as well as the operating system itself. I would estimate significant savings over the years even though I have donated several times the cost of an OEM Windows 7 DVD to Ubuntu and other projects.
Of course, 'lots of people' will be using non-Windows systems as they move to [tablets|chrome-book like laptops|Android based desktops when available] over the next few years. Based on a colleague fluidly demonstrating her Samsung Galaxy Tab the other day, they won't need much hand-holding!
Negative comments on blogs? Perhaps not a surprise [1]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_disinhibition_effect
Obligatory comic response: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
Totally untrue in my experience, unless you want to use something as minimal as gentoo/archlinux, and that's not for everyone (and even then, low-level stuff like sub-optimal drivers might byte you).
Windows XP is still the champ here, and I believe in many cases 7 does as least as good a job as most popular distros (Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora/...).
I don't actually understand why wouldn't anyone use a minimal distro like Arch on any hardware. You would be surprised just how lightweight a full featured desktop environment like KDE can be on Arch/Gentoo.
Plus as time moves on, fewer and fewer software will support XP. Where as distros like Puppy will support all the latest browsers, have the latest security fixes and still have a lower hardware footprint (disk space, RAM, CPU, etc).
I also owned a first-generation netbook, and there XP was better than Puppy, Slax, etc...
The problem here is you're just quoting anecdotal evidence - which is pretty much worthless. There's nothing to say what the specs of the systems were, what your usage was, nor any post-install optimisations (eg since you're familiar with Windows I'd wager that you weren't running a vanilla install of XP - instead disabling themes and such like to streamline the OS. But you were probably still running a vanilla build of stripping XP down to it's minimal components while running a vanilla versions of those other Linux distros).
To further prove how useless anecdotal evidence is, I wiped my wife's old laptop and installed Xubuntu and saw some marked speed improvements - despite Xubuntu having desktop compositing and such like enabled (which wasn't enabled in Windows). I've also replaced two offices full of Windows CE thin clients with Linux - same hardware, but instead of WinCE (which is as minimal as Windows gets), it's running ArchLinux with LXDE.
So we can all quote the "upgrades" that we've done, but without offering any real details such stories are worthless (and the results would be mostly down to whichever OS your most familiar with anyway - as you'll know how to tweak it's performance). Which is why the majority of my point was about the age of XP (and the issues that gives in terms of security and support) vs running the latest version of Linux. At lest with that, we can evidence our arguments.
> "typically using user friendly but lightweight software (like XFCE)"
XFCE isn't actually that lightweight. I mean, it's often used as a lightweight alternative to KDE, GNOME and such like, but they're pretty beefy / bloated desktop environments. If you wanted something lightweight then you would have been better off with LXDE, E17 or any of the numerous window managers. But this goes back to my point about it being easier to for you to run a low footprint version of Windows because you're more familiar with that - and thus how worthless anecdotal evidence is because of that bias.
> "I also owned a first-generation netbook, and there XP was better than Puppy, Slax, etc..."
Well that's definitely not true because the 1st generation netbooks were ASUS EeePCs and they were all Linux (Xandros to be precise). XP wouldn't even run on the netbooks originally. Microsoft had to push through changes to XP's code and licences after the netbook market started to take off out of worry that Linux might grab a chunk of Windows's market. And I remember this vividly because not only does my wife have a 1st generation EeePC, but I remember the Linux fanboys proclaiming that netbooks marked the "year of the Linux desktop" (which sadly never happened due to Microsoft subsidising Windows so massively that Linux netbooks actually worked out more expensive in comparison).
I also agree XFCE isn't really lightweight - but it's included in a helluva lot of things that describe themselves as lightweight and target older machines.
Maybe we can say the netbook was second generation then. It was an Acer Aspire One. I think you could choose between a weird crippled Linux or a Windows install. Or maybe it was dual-boot? I installed a fresh copy to get rid of the crapware anyway.
It's a matter of context. XFCE is usually shipped as a lightweight yet highly configurable alternative to the feature-rich desktop environments (DE) such as KDE and GNOME. Which it is. But that's only relative to the resources that it's peers consume. However in the last 5 or 6 years LXDE has come on the scene - which is even even more stripped down than XFCE was and as LXDE has a strong focus on modularization, it's even easier to run a low-footprint LXDE desktop. But as it's a relatively recent DE, it's not been a distro default-choice until recently.
There's also E17 (enlightenment) which has been around for donkey's years yet oddly seems to draw very little attention despite it's impressive performance. Not sure why that is, but if I had to guess - it might be because it's aesthetics is a little more individual so switching between different toolkits in E17 can be a touch more jarring and harder to unify.
However if you want really low footprint, then you need to run purely window manager instead of a full desktop environment. But they're less intuitive, less pretty and just generally another class of UI.
So there's a reason why XFCE is (or was) the low footprint DE of choice.
> "Maybe we can say the netbook was second generation then. It was an Acer Aspire One. I think you could choose between a weird crippled Linux or a Windows install. Or maybe it was dual-boot? I installed a fresh copy to get rid of the crapware anyway."
You might have a 1st generation Acer netbook then. But Acer weren't the first to market with netbooks. I think they were a full year behind ASUS's EeePCs (and even further behind similar devices aimed at different markets - such as the OLPC).
I take your point about (I'm guessing) an 800MHz P3 with 256Mb. I'd use AntiX for something in that range as I am a bit lazy. But I could still get use from it.
It's up to the blog owner to foster a polite and interesting atmosphere. If he's approving the cranks, idiots, and ranters, then he only has himself to blame.
Okay, I'm kidding. I've tried some comedy stuff as a hobby and quickly realized that no matter how obvious to you think the jokes are -- hell, you probably think you're making it too blindingly obvious -- someone won't get it. They simply aren't your target audience. Maybe if you filled them with memes or rage comics it would communicate "hey there doofus, this is a joke!" But you'd lose the very people you're trying to target.
The people that appreciate a slight turn of phrase or subtle, dry wit don't much cross over with the those who find least common denominator humor funny. Oh well.
In fact your post is somewhat ironic because the article was about exactly that kind of negative knee-jerk reaction where commenters are quick to jump on the offensive without stopping to think about what they just read.
Were any of those he compared to ones where he was deliberately being dumb and wrong about something?
>And his article in question wasn't "dumb" - it was just satire which a bunch of kids misinterpreted as being "dumb".
Shrug. Poe's law. Or, as 4chan puts it, "ironic shitposting is still shitposting".
I feel for the author, I really do. He posted some rather obvious satire about Windows vs Linux and then faced the wrath of the brain-dead as numerous zealots took to site -and e-mail- to send profanities. But what the author misses is that this tribal behavior happens with all OSs and has been the case for many years. Sadly this is nothing new nor unique to his incident.
While it's easier said than done, sometimes it's better to just ignore the hate and silently moderate the worst comments (or better yet, close the comments on that article and let the haters have their flamewars somewhere else)