Interesting article about the "Linux attitude"

[Thetargos]

I came across this article when checking my e-mail, and was rather surprised to see it in the ZDNet IT news section. It describes very well the attitude towards new users from many, many Unix and Linux "L33T" users, but it also identify the underlying differences in "logic" that operate in both the *nix and the Microsoft world. I thought we could have a nice debate/discussion about this, as even though the Fedora community can be tough (pedantic, bureaucratic, some times condescending), at least it doesn't gives all newbies an RTFM kind of welcome to each an every inquiry (sure we all have pointed users in the "right" direction by telling them what to read and what not, but I've seldom seen a kind of "f**k off and look it up, then come back to me when you know what you are talking about" kind of answer. However in the Linux community at large, these kind of answers from the community seem to be the norm, and the points made in this article surely got me thinking.

So what do you think?

Link

[JN4OldSchool]

I think that response hit the nail right on the head. The problem is a huge misunderstanding of what Linux is and expectations that Linux users should want to hand-hold the new user because for some strange reason we actually want them to join our ranks. There is a vast difference between a Unix/Linux user arguing that his OS is better and wanting to convert the world.

Speaking for myself, and from what I have seen, most regulars in this forum, questions get answered according to how they are asked.

One of our regular members wrote a great piece on this very topic. It inspired me when I read it and I feel it fits perfectly in this thread. I will PM him and ask him to link it or give me permission to do so.

[Dan]

Hmmm.

I think this is quite a mouthful of truth.

...What he’s doing here is striking out as a way of expressing the frustration he feels at being unable to understand what we’re all talking about - and while that’s fully understandable because he’s the victim of a social community confusing training with education, I think it’s also completely illustrative of the great divide blocking widespread Linux acceptance within the MCSE community.

[Thetargos]

Originally Posted by JN4OldSchool

One of our regular members wrote a great piece on this very topic. It inspired me when I read it and I feel it fits perfectly in this thread. I will PM him and ask him to link it or give me permission to do so.

I'd very much like to see it.

Absolutely, Dan. Also the bits about of how both environments operate is quite... insightful. The examples about a Solaris admin in a SuSE environment and a Win2003/XP Server on a WinNT 4 environment truly express key differences in what I've been calling for years "underlying logic".

[brunson]

I like this bit:

Basically, to learn Unix you learn to understand and apply a small set of key ideas and achieve expertise by expanding both the set of ideas and your ability to apply them.

[sej7278]

i find the unix vs. microsoft *user* debate more interesting than whiny n00bs

as a programmer i've definitely noticed that unix programmers seem to be better. they do things the cleaner way - optimising for speed, scalability, portability, security etc. microsoft programmers seem to just get it done quickly and often really badly, probably due to using ide's like visual studio or jbuilder and not actually understanding what the code is doing under the hood.

unix programmers are purists - we use text editors, write makefiles or shell scripts to automate things, we do unit testing, use open standards and lower level programming languages like c, instead of java/c#.....

it just doesn't seem to be in the average windows user's mindset to even think about such things.

frankly i think anybody who is an mcse is going to be such a microsoft-loving person that they can't be bothered to learn unix, and really why should they - an mcse is going to make a rubbish unix sysadmin anyway, like i would make a rubbish win2003 "admin" (i'd spend too long cursing the pointy-clicky nature of all of microsoft's management tools and try to write scripts to do everything - like the time my solaris box and a 20-line perl script did in a day what a team of nt4 admins couldn't do in a week - restore all the activedirectory permissions on a 2tb fileserver that had died).

i'm not particularly impressed with these "qualifications" anyway, i've worked with too many cissp, ccna, mcse folks who have no clue.

[adrianx]

Originally Posted by sej7278

frankly i think anybody who is an mcse is going to be such a microsoft-loving person that they can't be bothered to learn unix, and really why should they - an mcse is going to make a rubbish unix sysadmin anyway

I tend to agree.

Maybe I should find a MS forum and ask them why nothing starts when I click start! I'm sure I'll get a friendly answer....

[dubb]

I read this article when it first came out. All I can say is I try to learn something about .nix all the time and I still ask Noobish questions without looking for an answer on my own. Frankly taking a hit on asking such questions doesn't effect me much. What I'm really interested in is the reason why we have to do something a certain way. That alone gives me the will look things up. As a noob I hate to ask obvious questions that I know that are easy. Just don't know where to look.

I read Linux news all the time.
Are MCSEs too stupid to learn Linux?
http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterpri...ses_too_s.html

[Dan]

... All of which begs the question: Are *NIX users simply too stupid to appreciate the enduring qualities of Windows NT?

OK!


That one left me leaning back in the chair laughing so hard my belly hurts! <....>

This isn't about operating systems. It's about people! (in general) Brain locked zealots in particular!

As proof I offer any one of the following:

Linux vs Windows
Ubuntu vs anything else
LVM vs anything else
Firefox vs Opera
AMD vs Intel
ATi vs nVIDIA
Beer vs anything else
Global warming vs anything else
Ford vs Chevy
Mayo vs Mustasrd
Turnips vs anything else!

[Thetargos]

Originally Posted by Dan

As proof I offer any one of the following:

Mayo vs Mustasrd

But these two complement each other so well!!

...Ahh... I see where you're getting at, mister! All OSes complement each other!

/runs

[juanfgs]

Originally Posted by Dan

OK!


That one left me leaning back in the chair laughing so hard my belly hurts! <....>

This isn't about operating systems. It's about people! (in general) Brain locked zealots in particular!

As proof I offer any one of the following:

Linux vs Windows
Ubuntu vs anything else
LVM vs anything else
Firefox vs Opera
AMD vs Intel
ATi vs nVIDIA
Beer vs anything else
Global warming vs anything else
Ford vs Chevy
Mayo vs Mustasrd
Turnips vs anything else!

I can see you didn't include the Emacs vs. Vim flame war, but it is obviously ommited because we ALL know that Emacs is superior.

[majikthise]

Having been on the Microsoft side of things (and I still is), the MCSE way of doing things is still to a large extent 'do it our way, and don't ask questions' that's the impression I've got from reading most of the pre-exam books. Also, there seems to be a totally different point of view with teaching methods these days. People that I meet who've just left school or have done in the last 15-20 years just don't seem to have been given proper computer skills beyond how to use M$ Windows & Office. They have been given a very shallow set of skills with no expectation to look beyond the M$ world-view. Its probably a sadder reflection of the numb skulls who are in charge of the national curriculum. They seem to expect the universities to pick up the baton, sadly not everyone can afford a university education. My local college doesn't do much beyond adult learning courses with M$ products either.

[scottro]

Jn4 was talking about an article of mine. It was originally written for the tlug list--some newcomers wound up almost driving some of the more valuable oldtimers off the list.

http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaiju...wbieguide.html

On the other hand, were I an MS professional, used to good, centralized documentation, investigating Linux, I'd get frustrated too. I got frustrated enough coming from FreeBSD, and its docs aren't on the level of MS docs. <shrug>

Sigh, that sounds like a troll thing. It's not meant to be.

I think Linux docs could be better. I make my own small effort on my pages.
'Nuff said.

[w5set]

pish-tosh....and humbug...XEmacs rulz!
And gedit ain't so bad neither...nor kedit

And just why (Dan)-----would turnips NOT be better then all else? hummmm?
And I like Broccoli too!! ---so there!

The most important "attitude" to have with any OS (especially Linux) is .....
"I can do this "stuff".....
If others can accomplish getting familar with Linux and having a great looking and acting desktop/ser ver/whatever.......
SO CAN I.....

As far as new users getting a feel of "leet" (or RTFM) coming back from a query of theirs from other more developed users........It won't ever go completely away....some questions are posted right above a thread that had 20 responses on the VERY same subject and "some" folks just plain refuse to do a minor bit of looking before leaping.

"Like man, I didn't feel that was directed at me--but I can see that now...are you sure that would work in my very special case?"
"Why yes it will work....now lets all hold hands and sing "Coom Bah Yah"
I can just see it now...

Human nature is gonna be the same for a long time I figure....you can lead a horse to water--but you can't necessarily make it drink....old saying but so so true.

[Firewing1]

This is exactly why I feel that many large project should merge (*cough* KDE and Gnome *cough*). That idea sounds crazy, but I really don't see the point in duplicating work.

Duplication of work across FOSS software projects or distributions themselves isn't moving backwards, but it isn't moving forwards either. The spirit of open source means that we as users can create, modify, fork, and redistribute - But at a certain point it just becomes ridiculous (funpidgin? Why can't the pidgin developers be OK with adding a separate plugin instead of forking it!).

The amount of FOSS software projects and distributions that aim to accomplish the very same goals is enormous, and as far as I can see this results in a lack of up to date documentation and in some cases ease of use since a lot of time is spend on meta management - Copying code from a forked project, implementing features that the "competing" project now has. The result of that is, of course, the "do it yourself" response since no documentation exists.

What I hope will happen eventually is that developers become much more user oriented - Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that developer's aren't now - but I mean to say that developers will design software with user input as their #1 priority. After all, 99% of the time it's users and not fellow developers that will end up interfacing with the software!

We can start now by standardizing lots of things. For example, imagine if we could move the common functionality of Enlightment, Gnome, KDE, etc to a third party. Change something once in that third party, and the change is felt in all desktop environments without any extra work needed! And developers can then spend that time saved (many times over since many desktop environments exist) improving the differences of each project, creating new common features or adding documentation on those features - So each project has shared data but its uniqueness as well. And the entire situation is much more welcoming to new users wanting to give a hand patching/programming.

Firewing1