UK Which? magazine's thoughts on Linux

[QIII]

I think "ideological zealotry" is the wellspring of all the other ills. Zealotry is great for getting things moving. One must acknowledge the contribution of early soldiers in the trenches.

However, when a core cadre of zealots fails to yield to statesmen, they become more hindrance than help -- particularly when they vocally and publicly pass judgement on those who do not share the same religious fervor. This is where the stereotype of the militant Windows-hating geek comes from.

OSes belong in the toolbox to be used as needed for a particular task. They do not belong in a reliquary to be brought out during Mass by a self-appointed priesthood that demands that everyone forsake all other religious idols. Little wonder then that the larger community shies away from cooperation.

Then again, perhaps it is I who is wrong in not being a Linux apologist.

Thus ends my rant.

[matt_symes]

We should expect people to be ill-informed when they come to Linux. There's nothing in the world of Windows, phones, and tablets that prepares anyone for Linux.

The entry barriers to Linux need to be as low as possible. Expecting people to traverse a learning curve before they attempt to install Linux won't cut it. .

Agreed; but you miss my point.

We should not expect the tech industries reporting of Linux to be inaccurate or misinformed and that is why i said that i am choosy about the sites i go to and the tech news i read in general.

I try to get my information from as unbiased and knowledgeable places as possible. I have limited time and don't need to be sorting the wheat from the chaff.

Many blogs just copy each other. Many news sites and newspapers copy each other without using due process to validate the claims they make. And then, of course, you have the biased press.

I not saying new users should be informed. Of course they are going to be uninformed, however they should not be misinformed by inaccurate reporting of Linux.

...and i see far too many articles from the tech industry or Linux blogs, from those who supposedly known Linux, that are just plain inaccurate or wrong

[vasa1]

...
I try to get my information from as unbiased and knowledgeable places as possible. ...

Being able to know which source is unbiased and knowledgeable requires experience.

[matt_symes]

Being able to know which source is unbiased and knowledgeable requires experience.

..and once again my point is missed.

[SeijiSensei]

..and once again my point is missed.

I'm not sure I understand your point then, Matt. Are you saying that technical journalists should be more responsible in their coverage of Linux? How would you possibly enforce that? So unless you have a prior sense of which sites are accurate and which are not, it seems to me vasa1's point stands. New users will be unable to determine which of the scads of information about Linux is worth reading and which is not.

I see this all the time in support requests here, especially for complex issues like server configuration. I've seen quite a few postings along the lines of "I followed this blog to install Postfix+dovecot+MySQL+maildir+spamassassin, and it didn't work." How do people choose which blogs to read when they come to the subject knowing nothing at all? I also think there's a lack of patience among many users. When I started out learning about Linux and networking some two decades ago, I read a couple of books, mostly ones from O'Reilly. I'd devote a day or so to a single task like configuring a BIND server, then probably another day trying to figure out what went wrong. I have the sense that people are not that patient these days. They want to find a simple step-by-step solution on the web that tells them what to do so they can move on to something else.

There's also the more cynical view that few journalistic organizations have much incentive to develop Linux expertise when it won't generate advertising revenues. I had an e-mail exchange recently with the "Public Editor" at the New York Times where I complained about the near total absence of stories about Linux in the paper's Technology section. What news they do print about Linux tends to be negative, the "Heartbleed" and "Shellshock" stories being two good examples. That type of reporting reinforces the notion that "if it's free, it can't be good," which I find the most persistent obstacle to Linux adoption in businesses, along with the problem of finding affordable IT staff with Linux experience.

I long ago quit waiting for Linux and open-source in general to gain wider visibility and acceptance in the broader populations of computer users.

[buzzingrobot]

Agreed; but you miss my point.

We should not expect the tech industries reporting of Linux to be inaccurate or misinformed and that is why i said that i am choosy about the sites i go to and the tech news i read in general.

I try to get my information from as unbiased and knowledgeable places as possible. I have limited time and don't need to be sorting the wheat from the chaff.

Many blogs just copy each other. Many news sites and newspapers copy each other without using due process to validate the claims they make. And then, of course, you have the biased press.

I not saying new users should be informed. Of course they are going to be uninformed, however they should not be misinformed by inaccurate reporting of Linux.

...and i see far too many articles from the tech industry or Linux blogs, from those who supposedly known Linux, that are just plain inaccurate or wrong

I have a very low opinion of current tech media. I use "media" rather than "journalism" because I see little evidence, especially on the web, that anyone actually practices journalism. E.g., interviewing someone, even via email.

Instead, they create clickbait to boost revenue. The amount of uncredited content and outright thievery is stunning. I read a fair amount of some of this stuff, and on any given day a piece on one of the reputable sites will be plagiarized dozens of time. They don't even bother to change the headlines.

There are also a number of clever and obviously automated sites that grab posts elsewhere, wrap them in boilerplate, and publish them as their own.

Few of these sites do any original work at all. They rely on announcements in email lists, RSS feeds, PR releases, and copying other sites.

If I recall correctly, Which? targets a broad mainstream consumer base, so I'm surprised they ran a piece on Linux at all. I think the writer's frustrations, even if prompted by lack of knowledge and even lack of bothering to look something up, reflects how most people I know would react to trying to install Linux out of the blue. It *is* too hard. Relying on people to acquire the expertise needed to deal with Linux is not going to be any more successful at building the base than expecting millions of people to become disciples of RMS. Anything that requires user intervention -- even answering the few disguised questions in the Ubuntu installer -- to deal with disk selection and partitioning is a losing proposition. (Assuming people know about partitions and disks is a very bad assumption.) People expect operating systems to be on the machine when they buy it. And that isn't going to happen for Linux.

[matt_symes]

I'm not sure I understand your point then, Matt. Are you saying that technical journalists should be more responsible in their coverage of Linux?

Yes. That's pretty much what i'm saying.

How would you possibly enforce that?

You can't. I wish you could but you can't.

So unless you have a prior sense of which sites are accurate and which are not, it seems to me vasa1's point stands.

His point stands but was not what i was really think about when i wrote my posts. I was pretty unclear i think.

New users will be unable to determine which of the scads of information about Linux is worth reading and which is not.

Yep. I am in no away making any comment about new users after all i was one once

I do despair at quite a bit of the tech media that i have read over the years and that Which? article is a good example. Which? is pretty highly respected and people expect good quality journalism from them, however that article, though well meaning i suspect, was not entirely accurate.

Ignore me. I'm just grumpy today

I use "media" rather than "journalism" because I see little evidence, especially on the web, that anyone actually practices journalism.

Agreed !