Mike Stone

Mostly The Lonely Howls Of Mike Baying His Ideological Purity At The Moon

It's all Linux's Fault!!

04 Jun 2011

I just got done reading Day 3 of Tony Bradley’s 30 Days with Ubuntu Linux. Day 3 and he’s already kinda pissed me off.

Day 1 wasn’t even a day with Linux. It was his announcement that he was going to be doing it. If you’re going to be doing 30 days with Ubuntu Linux, at least really do 30 days.

Day 2 he installed the OS. A process that takes all of a half an hour. On top of that, he used wubi. Now, wubi is all find and dandy if you’re planning on going back to Windows regularly, but if you’re actually going to be using Linux for 29 days, it’s worth your time to do a native installation. Of course, if your plan to start off with is to half-ass your way through “29 Days of Ubuntu Linux” and go straight back to Windows anyway, then you’re fine with wubi.

Day 3 he goes straight to iTunes. This is something that every person critical of Linux will do at one point or another. Let’s get this straight, iTunes is a proprietary application written by a company that doesn’t write Linux software.

The author states, “If Linux wants to be taken seriously as an alternative desktop for the masses–not just Linux gurus–then things have to just work without requiring so much effort.”

This is after he had it installed and mostly working, despite the fact that there is no Linux version of he software.

Really?

So much effort?

You just installed an application on an OS that it’s not written for. Can you do that in Windows without emulation? Nope. Score one for Linux.

Further, the fact that iTunes doesn’t have a Linux version is not the fault of Linux. It’s the fault of Apple, who chose not to write a version for Linux. The people who have worked long and hard to make Linux everything it is today can want to be taken seriously all they want, but it doesn’t make Apple write software for their platform.

The same goes for Microsoft Office.

Linux doesn’t run Microsoft Office. Why? It’s not because Linux is in any way lacking. It’s because Microsoft doesn’t sell a Linux version. If there’s someone to blame for that, it’s Microsoft.

Blaming the platform because a particular company (and a company that competes with Linux btw) has chosen not to write software for it is flat out stupid.

This kind of thing frustrates me to no end.

Why?

Let me tell you how the rest of the 29 days are going to go.

He’ll play around, toy with things, and in the end, he’ll point out all the things that don’t work (which he knew they wouldn’t when he went in) like running applications that aren’t even native to the operating system, as a fault of the OS, and say with a gentle sigh that Linux just isn’t ready for the mainstream yet. That really seems to be the intent of this 29 days anyway.

Why don’t we just skip to the end Tony?



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