Linked by Preston Liam Whels on Wed 16th Apr 2003 18:07 UTC
Put yourself in his/her shoes. You're a budding young technical writer and the one word you hear popping up in almost every tech-related conversation is, you guessed it, Linux. Now look in the mirror and try to tell yourself you're more than a writer. After all, you write about technology because it not only interests you, but you're accurate and fair enough to tell it like it is. Maybe not.
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"Only if you're dumb enough to be running Win 9.x or NT 4"
Now that my intelligence has been called into question, I'm sure you'll read no further.
Yes, I did run Windows 98SE (didn't know there was a version 9.x although I remember 3.1, 95, 98, etc.). Your insult notwithstanding, it was not because I was stupid but because of two factors:
a) my equipment was older and XP (or 2000) was unlikely to run on my notebook (which rules out upgrading) or was likely to provide spotty performance at best.
b) I did not want to provide financial support to a company I find to have questionable ethics and believe to be guilty of criminal behavior in terms of its business practices.
"lay off the stupid, outdated, and mostly untrue BSOD crap"
It isn't outdated for a large number of people. I don't have exact figures, but the last ones I saw indicated that there were still quite a few people who were using flavors of Windows other than 2000 or XP. I can also tell you it was not untrue for me. And when an update to one of Microsoft's own software packages cause the system to hose up and forced a reinstallation (the only way to ensure the entire upgrade was removed because the uninstall command would not uninstall), that was when I first began to think Windows was not in my future.
I also don't run a server (I'm an end user who visits this site for information), so I won't even try to speak to that.
"And the last time I checked, any idiot with a computer can comment on a public forum. I'm direct proof! It's the beauty of the Internet. Just as one idiot is free to post "RTFM you jag off!" on a forum, this article proves that another idiot is free to read the message and use the negative tone of a single idiot as Anecdotal Evidence to represent the Entire Community."
In my case, it wasn't a single idiot; it was any number of people who were condescending to new users (the term newbie is, in itself, a bit demeaning in my view, even though many people do not intend it that way). I personally never said this represented the view of the entire community. If it did, there would be no distribution that would or could be satisfactory.
However, I have run across this attitude too many times and it is part of why I have given up on several distributions in the past. Some users (unfortunately, more than one single idiot) seem to believe other users and their questions are beneath them.
On the other hand, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I have found the people who use and develop Vector Linux to be extremely helpful, extremely friendly, and extremely supportive of new users. They believe, as do all good teachers, that the only stupid questions are those left unasked by the would-be learner. That means that some questions will be repeated by different new users in different situations with different levels of understanding.
I have also found any number of people on the ExtremeTech Linux forum to be very supportive and helpful.
The old song may argue that "one bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch," but it sure doesn't help.