One of the message boards I lurk on is The Straight Dope, a very interesting community where I dare say the representative member is a bit above average in intelligence, curiosity, and social graces.
So it is with some interest I read “Give me a hand installing Ubuntu“, where a newcomer who wants to try out Ubuntu goes from:
All the cool kids are doing it! Everybody says it’s super-easy now and totally non-geeks can do it!
To:
Dear techies: Fuck you. Fuck you long, and fuck you hard. I don’t care if you have your own pet operating systems, okay? Have a great time with that. But when you go around evangelizing and telling everybody that your grandma and your mailman and your toy poodle should use Linux because it’s not like it used to be and it’s totally accessible? That is a bald-faced lie and you should be ashamed of yourselves. I wanted a little project. I didn’t want to waste ten hours of my life on something that still doesn’t work, on something that I would never have tried if I hadn’t been convinced that, hey, it’s totally easy these days! This is bullshit and you will never, never, ten years from now when maybe it really is accessible to the masses, get me to try your brand of Flavor-Ade again.
Ouch.
Anyway, we talked about this particular situation in general terms at the LUG last night, and here are some of my thoughts.
On Being Ready for the Desktop
One of the favorite talking points of Linux detractors is that while Linux might be great for techies and servers, it is most assuredly “not ready for the desktop”.
I think this misses the point; it’s not Linux that isn’t ready for the desktop: Users aren’t ready for the Desktop.
If you have ever had to support Windows users, you’ll quickly understand that people can’t make Windows do what they want either – even if they have training and support provided. They may have a handful of tasks committed to rote memorization, sure – but the slightest variation can throw a user into a panic.
And I am not being sarcastic or condescending - I have had to support Windows users that are professionals, well-educated and thinking people, but still can’t do tasks like burn files to a CD or even determine if a specific printer is installed (much less print to it) without personal intervention.
Is this a failing of Windows? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But Windows is no more “ready for the desktop” than Linux is – it is just that Windows has the advantage of a massive amount of tech support, training, user familiarization, and other 3rd party assistance that is only now slowly appearing on Linux.
On “Just wanting it work”
Another favorite rallying cry is that “The user just wants things to work”, often trotted out to defend some retarded-ass decision.
The statement might be somewhat true, but I question what exactly it justifies.
Consider: a consumer just wants shit to be cheap (if not free-of-charge). So, if you are a merchant and you want a lot of customers, then you better start giving away your goods. Oops! That might not be a very sustainable economic model.
A similar effect is at work in the Free Software ecosystem, except the economy there is driven on sharing and collaboration. If the only thing a user cares about is that the system works for them, then you are unlikely to get much useful sharing and collaboration out of that user.
This is oversimplified (most consumers care about more than just cheap shit, just like most users care about more than something “just working”), but I see a growing deference to the self-centered self-entitled immediate gratification attitude of “I just want something that works for me, right now, and with no effort on my part” as a long-term issue.
On being sold a bill of goods
Someone out there is promoting Ubuntu (or some other distro) as a magical one-click “it just works” OS. This is a fatally ignorant thing to do, because Ubuntu is not — nor is any other distro, nor is any other operating system, Free or Proprietary — perfect.
People are always going to have some sort of issue with their OS – expectation management is part of that process. A part of expectation management is to honestly let people know what awaits them.
On wanting it all and wanting it now
Another thing that is funny to me is how people expect something as complicated, powerful, and relatively new as an operating system to be trivial to master.
Even if you reduce the role of the computer to that of a tool (which is a popular trope, despite being ignorant in the extreme), consider what a powerful tool it is! Only the most simple tools are expected to be operated with no instruction or training.
You might pick up a hammer or wrench with no prior experience or without reading the manual, but even slightly more powerful tools, like say a vacuum cleaner or lawnmower, at least get a quick once over with the manual if only to figure out a minor point or two – and truly powerful tools might even require professional training and certification.
On thinking you can do anything
I play guitar, and from time to time run into people that either want lessons or feel the need to tell me how they are going to learn to play guitar too.
Here’s the thing about that: no one (with realistic expectations) expects to be able to pick up a guitar and just start playing it (unless they want to cover Nirvana! Heey-yooooo!) – and most people give up after a couple of days of cacophony and sore fingertips.
Most hobbies, hell most things worth doing, take some time and effort – some investment.
Imagine if someone came around ranting about how playing guitar was “bullshit” because it meant long hours sitting alone in the bedroom hunched over paper wearing headphones and they wanted to be a rock star right now!
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