zealots rejoice

August 16th, 2006

In the linux community there is a segment of people who are extremely focused on what they perceive as Linux's battle against the Evil Empire. I have to say those kinds of opinions seem a little far fetched to me, when it comes to a point where people don't care much for the merits of the argument anymore, they simply want to have it their way no matter what. There have been times when I was inclined to do that myself, but I think with age pragmatism starts to set in. I think people should know the facts and they should use whatever works the best for them.

And this shift has come about without political struggles, it has just arrived naturally, catering to the circumstances of the situation. Since nowadays I'm not home in Norway most of the time, my old desktop computer isn't of much use to me, I just take the laptop to Holland. Meanwhile, the desktop is perfectly functional and shouldn't go to waste, so I leave behind Ubuntu on this "family PC". I've also set up Ubuntu on another desktop, which is catered more to personal use. I tried to make this happen over Easter, but at the time Ubuntu Hoary just wasn't up to it, it took too much work to get it running smoothly (and the default KDE setup was mind boggingly ugly, what the hell are the Kubuntu people thinking :wth: ). The recent improvements in usabilty have made Ubuntu Dapper a proper option for regular desktop users.

Downstairs, the file server has been dismantled on account of a hardware failure. The firewall still remains, so that's 2 Ubuntu desktops, one Gentoo laptop, one RedHat firewall and just one lonely WindowsXP desktop left (which will remain such on account of its user being very attached to it). I suppose I'm in a position to write one of those boring "I set up linux for my grandma and it's working really well" articles on newsforge.com now.

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3 Responses to "zealots rejoice"

  1. Nawaf says:

    hooray for linux! :D
    lol on the grandma bit.. I'd do that too.. if only my grandma used PCs, tho.. :P

  2. numerodix says:

    Yeah, the grandma reviews stink cause they're so trivial. Apparently all grandmas (or parents) ever need is to browse the web and send email. That's just Firefox and gmail. Which you can do on a cell phone these days. It would actually be interesting if they had more refined needs. Like a few weeks ago I read this story about a publishing house that switched to all FOSS and that's interesting as they had complex needs and they were all solved. But anyone can browse the web and send email, it doesn't say anything about linux.

    While in fact I think people do need more than that. They want flashplayer to be installed, they want to open windows media files, they want java applets to work and so on. Stuff that isn't present in distros by default. And those kinds of details rarely get any mention at all.

  3. Nawaf says:

    right, well, there's always linspire for those people :D

    Flash 9 for linux is on the way, btw.. wee :D