There have been more articles like this appearing lately, and I first thought that we must have a wave of people waking from 10-15 year comas. Sure, Linux and BSD give tremendous flexibility and versatility, as well as allowing a user full access under the hood… okay, these are only true as long as Apple is kept away from FOSS. Anyway, there are options for a user to tweak, optimize, and configure endlessly, and the user is actually welcomed to do this (I think I hear the sound of Apple and MS fanboies fainting in the background at the thought). However, the beauty of distributions as of 7-8 years ago is FOSS frees the user from having to build technical mental muscle, especially with Fedora, the ‘buntu’s, and PC-BSD.

FOSS doesn’t ask more of your technical abilities, it asks less, far less. And, you get the reliability of a Macintoy without having to give up hardware support* or flexibility, while getting the broad hardware support* of Windows without giving up the ability to depend on your PC. Not only that, but the ease of finding applications is far easier for FOSS than Cupertino or Redmond can even think of offering (yumex and synaptic are amazing!).

(*Let’s face it, by the standard of the term ‘hardware support’ that we normally use, Apple has zero. You can’t go to TigerDirect, the local PC shop, or whereever to pick up a motherboard, hard drive, wireless card, etc. and expect it to work. Pieces have to be the from the pitifully limited, obscenely overpriced offerings of Cupertino, or your out of luck. On the other hand, I was being generous to MS; my experiences over the past few years have been that they have fallen way behind FOSS, whether it comes to legacy or cutting edge hardware support and (of course) reliability.)

What kept me from trying FOSS earlier was this type of daming_with_faint_praise FUD. This does keep the average user at bay by making them think that the devil they know is less of an aggravation than the new one they’re hearing about. This keeps MS’ and Apple’s dangers at bay, for a while, because the last thing they need is for the average user to wake up. The duo have maintained each other for a while, by keeping choices so limited. In the main market view, for maximum hardware and software versatility, there has been MS. Then, for the well-heeled users that don’t need the options and just want to ditch MS’ headaches, there has been Apple… or for those with more money than sense that just want something to cuddle up with their egos, of course.

Again, though, these articles seem to be more frequent. At first, I was suspicious about my suspicions, but I am suspecting intent in this pattern. It’s hard to forget the Comes exhibits but, for anyone marginally aware, planting FUD like this does fit a long-running pattern. It is also a perfect way to scare away new users. And, it is also quite false. If FOSS hadn’t been easier, I know I would have ditched it, but adjusting to a new interface was no more trouble than jumping from one version of Windows to another, but without the headaches of having to learn to keep Windows propped up.

Regards,
mc