*NIXEDBLOG 3.0

Thomas Holbrook II | *NIXEDBLOG 3.0

Related:

LXer: you tell ‘em: The Thin Line Between Victim and Idiot.

Nuxified.org: Linux is not an OS

I agree that if a person knows they have a choice and they refuse to open their minds, they are no longer a victim.  That makes the individual who is no longer a victim foolish.  What I am going to do shortly after this post will probably surprise a few advocates of freedomware (those who market Linux and other technologies from the bazaar model of development).  Shortly after publishing this post, I will hopefully have a dual booting situation on at least two computers.  The second OS of course would be a distro of my choosing (hint: one of them will have the very distro currently being evaluated during the Distro Journey).  The first OS will be a scenic detour for the Distro Journey that I’m taking.  You see, I plan on evaluating the release candidate of Windows 7.

Did that make you, the reader, puke yet?  If you either don’t care or prefer Microsoft products, I’m sure you won’t be losing any sleep over it.  People like Ken Starks, Carla Schroder, and others may be getting a bit nauseous right about now.  It would probably make the people in question lose whatever meal they had just consumed if I were to tell that, yes, I have also run VIsta.  Now doesn’t it go against the title of the website, publication, and blog to run Windows at all, let alone Windows 7 and Vista?

Before I get into that, I read the very thing that needed to be said for a long time.  Starks is right.  It’s all too convenient to blame virus writers and overall “evildoers” for slowing down machines across the world and turning power houses into glorified paper weights.  The one thing he’s trying to spark and the one thing I tried to ask in the previous post is for people to stop being mentally lazy.  What got more interesting was when I came upon this discussion at LXer.  One of the comments that especially intrigued me was the following from Azerthoth:

I’m one of those poor ‘forced to use windows at work’ with the random linux based system here and there. I’m not talking about needing windows for $APP, I mean that the computers and all networks connections are under configuration control, dont have proper key token, no network for you … period.

As to the rest thats going on, juvenile competitive urination for distance.

Okay dude.  Let me see if I’ve got this right.  Just because a discussion has become intense, it’s become juvenile.  Come on!  It’s people stating their opinion.  By setting aside my own preconceived notions for just a second, I can realize and appreciate that there are multiple perspectives to the issue at hand.  Ken Starks being the Texan that he is, prefers being blunt and to the point when he speaks of advocacy.  Caitlyn Martin on the other hand prefers a more indirect approach (you know, the soft warm version of diplomacy… now if only politicians could adopt that concept…. *sigh* that’s another post for another day I suppose).  There’s two different points of view here, and both have their strengths and weaknesses.

The strong points of being straight to the point, blunt, and might I add, a great blogging style is that an audience can be had quite quickly.  Remember the teacher who took away the kid’s Live CD’s? That hit Slashdot, and normally, what Starks does never reaches the front page of that site.  He pushed all the right buttons in that post of his, but he also pushed some of the wrong buttons, which brings us to the weakness of being straight to the point, blunt, etc.  A friend of mine once said that honesty isn’t always the best policy.  In the middle of defending his very life being attacked (and that’s what advocating Linux and other similar software is to the man… his very life), he proceeded to blast teacher’s union.  Well, whether the comments were true or not is irrelevent.  Some people jumped on board and the story spiraled around the net faster than the latest worm.  Some people agreed, others disagreed, and some even thought that Starks was performing a character assassination.  Let me tell you, the whole thing caused quite a bit of tension.  Of course Starks has a brain and uses it quite well.  Otherwise, he wouldn’t have clarified things after the whole thing went viral (and he didn’t expect that happen by the way).  With that in mind, let’s talk about another way to advocate freedomware.

Another way to raise awareness is simply by talking about it in a nice friendly manner, especially in such a way as to not offend people.  There are some strengths to that approach, believe it or not.  Sometimes all it takes is to casually introduce something to someone.  I introduced Linux Mint to a few friends of mine at McDonalds, and they liked the 3D effects.  They thought it was pretty darn cool.  Sure, the people around you may not run it, but they’ll have at least heard of it.  The problem with this approach is that relying on it too much can make one afraid of confrontation per se.  There could be an opportunity to proliferate freedomware among the masses, and yet it’s passed up, because the fear of offending somebody is too great.  It’s sort of like raising a child.  You can’t reason with a two year old, because they don’t quite understand everything just yet.  Sometimes it’s okay to lightly tap their hand and in a stern voice tell them, “No!”  What if the child cries?  So be it.  It’s called discipline for a reason.  So what’s the point?

Sometimes it’s best to stay back and be the diplomat of sorts.  This can help ease tensions between different groups as well as gather ideas for projects that could very well suceed.  Picking battles is very important, but when an obvious one comes down the line, it’s important to recognize it as such and run full on into the fray instead of meekly standing on the sidelines hoping that nobody gets offended.  Confrontation doesn’t always mean somebody’s attacking you.  Sometimes, it simply means you’re being challenged to either overcome an obstacle, improve yourself, and quite possibly both at the same time.  The challenger does what they do because they know that the challenged is very intelligent, and has much potential.  So how can one leverage both styles effectively?

Before I get into that, I want to briefly comment on Danijel Orsolic’s piece on Nuxified.org, which is the second link in the related section of this post towards the top.  He’s arguing that Linux is not an OS per se.  Here’s what made his article really stand out:

Who is right and why? Who will ever be right and why? Who can ever have a final word in this mystical thing we call “Linux” and why? How can that even be possible when what we call Linux in reality is a market, not a single organization, not a hierarchy, but a fundamentally decentralized market of actors each with different interests, different needs and different preferences.

I have no faith at all in the Linux unification cause as much as I don’t have faith in command economies such as those in the soviet union. They never work.

The sooner we stop dreaming about it probably the better. Instead of endlessly pushing for the impossible, each distribution should realize that they are a project of providing a unique operating system, not merely some sort of a “subset” of a larger OS, with all of the implied responsibilities and false obligations that come from that. They should focus on providing their own particular operating system experience, NOT the “Linux experience”.

So in other words, Ubuntu should simply be called Ubuntu, not Ubuntu Linux or Ubuntu GNU/Linux.  Linus Torvalds himself believed that the maker of an OS that used the Linux kernel as its core should be able to call the OS whatever they wanted.  The one thing that I liked about the existence of multiple distros is the fact that there are so many choices.  I disagree with Orsolic’s point of view that calling something a distro is a bad thing.  A distributed operating system consists of different components from different projects, and are thus not all done in-house so to speak.  On the other hand, I have felt for quite some time that Linux is a layer of sorts.  It’s not the kernel that saves the day (though having decent drivers built into it helps quite a bit).  It’s the software running on top of the kernel that determines whether the day is productive or a giant headache.  I do agree with the notion that Ubuntu should not be seen as “The Linux.”

So what are the pearls of wisdom in Orsolic’s article and how does it relate to the discussion on LXer that appeared to turn into a peeing for distance contest at first site?  Danijel is presenting a different point of view, and that is the key to understanding why most marketing attempts fail.  Remember Tux500?  In ways, it did succeed, but in a way it failed as well.  How so?  Hint: Some major sites/publications refused to talk about it for starters.  Others accused Starks of being a thief, despite the fact that it was Bob Moore’s original idea.  In addition to that, too much noise filled the room so to speak.  I did something that sounded great at the time, but I also learned from my mistakes.

I went to Distrowatch and sent a press release I personally wrote to every distro site on the Top 100 list.  I had Bogdan correcting an type-oh I made at the bottom of the document I sent, someone from Fedora getting grumpy with me (“Stop spamming!  Grrrrrr!”), Ladislav himself not liking the idea, and everyone else pretty much ignoring me. 

All throughout, I noticed the one thing that bothered me.  People from other parts of the world kept thinking that it was a waste of time and money.  I found that to be ironic considering that American citizens are often considered to be close minded and ignorant.  The reason why Tux500 was not a complete success was because too many people had closed minds about the whole affair.  It’s also the very reason that most marketing efforts equal epic fail.

Dell could do better on their Ubuntu offerings, but they probably won’t in reality.  Why?  Microsoft software is their true bread and butter.  It always has been, so why would the upper crust of that company change their ways now?  The upper crust is full of close minded people who don’t see an opportunity that you and I may see.  That’s the issue at hand.  By marketing something, an argument is being made.  In a debate, whether formal or not, it is important to understand all sides of any given issue.

Ken Starks ran a personal business of his before, and when an Internet worm blasted through his computer network, it cost him.  He made the switch to a Linux-based platform so that he would no longer have to deal with antivirus software.  He has experience that proves that Windows sucks in so many ways.  His experience pretty much ends with XP as far as I know, which brings this whole thing full circle.

I started by declaring that I was going to run Windows 7 and seeing how everything would work out.  Yes, I did the blasphemous thing by running Vista, but let me tell you something.  When I say Vista sucks, I can explain why it sucks.  I have personally seen the difference in performance between Ubuntu and Vista.  Ubuntu wins hands down.  Any distro would win hands down, because the ridiculous hardware requirements of Vista.  Why the hell would I need 1 GB of RAM for an OS to begin to run halfway decently?  XP could run just fine and dandy on 256 MB of RAM, yet Vista calls for 512 minimum?  DRM is hardware intensive for certain, is not?  Let me take one more detour here, and hopefully you’ll understand what I’m saying.

A friend of mine was giving me links pertaining to artificial sweetener.  I ran upon a website that was all for them.  The person disagreed with the arguments made, but told me that it was important to get all sides of an argument before drawing conclusions of my own.  So if my experience with Windows 7 completely blows, I’ll be able to state exactly why it does so, and don’t tell me that freedomware developers haven’t influenced Microsoft developers.  They have.  Windows explorer in Vista reminds me of Konqueror in KDE to an extent.  Each install contains a “Users” folder, and each user has unique folders such as Documents, Music, Downloads, and more.  Tell me that they aren’t being influenced by freedomware developers.  Trust me, they are.

By knowing multiple sides of any given argument, anything can be marketed in a more effective manner.  That means reading things that may make you sick to your stomach, and coming up with effective rebuttals.  That means looking past the appearence of a peeing for distance contest on a discussion forum and noting the difference of philosophy, taking what’s useful to you, and setting aside the rest for future reference.  Testing Windows 7 does not make me a shill for Microsoft.  Keep in mind that Microsoft as a company will use products from other companies to better understand their competition.  The difference is that I’ll be honest in my assessment while the white collar individuals from Microsoft may distort reality, facts, and other forms of evidence to make it look like Windows is the superior choice when in reality it is not.