Comment A serious problem for widespread acceptance. (Score 1) 375
I agree and I'd add my $.02
I freely admit I was not one of the born *nix user and at the beginning had no clue to what I was doing. When the first OS you ever touched was a GUI-point and click stuff (a mac in my case), the concept of running anything with simple text as the console can be pretty bad. Yeah you had your piles and piles of documentation, but it's not the same as the graphical wizard walking through everything.
I had vaguely heard that *nix users were:
1) proud of their OS and normally chalk full of information
2) enthusiastic about sharing the OS
which I completely agree.
But the unmentioned aspect was how tightly knit the community was and how many a times, too impatient to often guide new users to the right stpes. Often times, my questions (though naive they were) were rejected and scoffed at. And at the end, all I could do was sit in my room, bitterly stay up very late and read *a lot* of documentation and experimenting before I grasped anything. In the end, I have to say, it really was *my* time and effort that led me to learn this OS.
In a sense, I can understand where the arrogance of many linux people come from. A lot them had to take time and learn the stuff before they could even use it properly. Simply stated, they sort of "passed" the diligence test and this is like a little reward. Now I rarely use Windows except on very rare occasions. But my expectations of getting help from elsewhere very much diminished though now I get better answers from other simply because now I already know how to run it.
But thinking back to all the late nite hours, agonizing over why the console was printing these gibberish, only to find out later that it was an easy problem to fix for an experienced user, I do feel sympathy for new users and as often as I can, I try to help out as much as I can. Maybe that is the other aspect the community can work on, having a little sympathy. The community can be as arrogant as they want because everyone's worked hard to achieve what we have so far, but linux is getting pretty mainstreamed now and less closed off, which means there will be a lot more new users and the overt arrogance and condescensance may give the wrong impression of people about linux, that it's just a closed off territory for ultra-techies and if you aren't born with it, tough.
It's out of the question that linux will ever become as user-friendly as windows in the near future (seriously, linux as having wizards and point-and click between "custom" and "normal", I cannot imagine) so the community needs to be more accepting and less hostile.
Just sharing my pennies.
-Kat-
I freely admit I was not one of the born *nix user and at the beginning had no clue to what I was doing. When the first OS you ever touched was a GUI-point and click stuff (a mac in my case), the concept of running anything with simple text as the console can be pretty bad. Yeah you had your piles and piles of documentation, but it's not the same as the graphical wizard walking through everything.
I had vaguely heard that *nix users were:
1) proud of their OS and normally chalk full of information
2) enthusiastic about sharing the OS
which I completely agree.
But the unmentioned aspect was how tightly knit the community was and how many a times, too impatient to often guide new users to the right stpes. Often times, my questions (though naive they were) were rejected and scoffed at. And at the end, all I could do was sit in my room, bitterly stay up very late and read *a lot* of documentation and experimenting before I grasped anything. In the end, I have to say, it really was *my* time and effort that led me to learn this OS.
In a sense, I can understand where the arrogance of many linux people come from. A lot them had to take time and learn the stuff before they could even use it properly. Simply stated, they sort of "passed" the diligence test and this is like a little reward. Now I rarely use Windows except on very rare occasions. But my expectations of getting help from elsewhere very much diminished though now I get better answers from other simply because now I already know how to run it.
But thinking back to all the late nite hours, agonizing over why the console was printing these gibberish, only to find out later that it was an easy problem to fix for an experienced user, I do feel sympathy for new users and as often as I can, I try to help out as much as I can. Maybe that is the other aspect the community can work on, having a little sympathy. The community can be as arrogant as they want because everyone's worked hard to achieve what we have so far, but linux is getting pretty mainstreamed now and less closed off, which means there will be a lot more new users and the overt arrogance and condescensance may give the wrong impression of people about linux, that it's just a closed off territory for ultra-techies and if you aren't born with it, tough.
It's out of the question that linux will ever become as user-friendly as windows in the near future (seriously, linux as having wizards and point-and click between "custom" and "normal", I cannot imagine) so the community needs to be more accepting and less hostile.
Just sharing my pennies.
-Kat-
