TechgnosisWeb Prime

So most of you may have noticed that I’m quite a bit of a Linux fan. I use it on my desktop, I use it on my laptop, I reccomend it to people, I use and install it almost every day at work, heck, this website runs on it. However, a conversation I had with my girlfriend today did make me see some things that I’ve been a bit of an asshole about.

Linux is good. It’s better, faster, and more stable than it’s been in years. The level of quality on existing applications has gone up considerably, and new applications are being worked on everyday. You can use it as an everyday desktop as easily as you can use it for web/file/print serving. Systems such as Debian, Gentoo, and, yes, even Red Hat, make installing applications and keeping them updated a breeze. You don’t have to worry about viruses, and spam and pop up fighting is integrated into most available web browsers and mail clients. However: it’s not perfect. And it still caters to a different type of person than what Windows usually caters to.

Here’s the deal: a lot of things in Linux still require you to know about your computer, and the things that go in it. They require you to at least understand a lot about the inner workings of your machine and the software on it. This, however, means that your average Linux user must spend some time and effort learning these things and fiddling about with them, dropping into the command line, etc. etc. This is fine and good if you, like me, enjoy messing about with the guts of your OS. But most people, frankly, don’t want to learn about their computers. They don’t want to have to know anything about their system, its commands and file structures and methods and formats. They just want things to work, simply and with as little hassle as possible. And, for the most part, Windows provides that hassle-free day to day experience much better than Linux does.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean it as an attack, or in a condescending way, when I say most people can’t be bothered to learn more about their computers and spend time learning the format of some arcane commands. It may seem strange to geeks like me, but most people do have better things to do. If you’re, say, a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant or, hell, even a housewife, there’s a thousand things in your day and in your life that are more important than trying to figure out just what command paramater will enable you to finally view that picture of your grandkids that your daughter in law emailed you. These people, most people, in fact, want convenience. They want to sit down and have their machine work hassle free, and they dont’ want ten billion options and configuration parameters, they just want a button they can click that will do what they want, or close enough to it that it doesn’t matter. And I can’t say I blame them.

Sure, Linux is free, both cost wise and speech wise. And that’s a big draw for a lot of use. But it’s still not as easy to use as your average Joe and Jane want it to be, and it won’t be for a short while longer, at least. Because of thise, while you might not spend money on it, you’ll certainly have to spend more time with it, both in education and work to get it to do the things you want to do. Linux can do anything Windows can, and then some… it’s just that it’s not always as easy as it is over in Windows land. Most people simply don’t have the time or patience to deal with that, and they’re willing to pay to have things just work, rather than use free apps that require you to spend a week learning them. Why spend hours trying to figure out how transcode, vcdimager, and k3b work and getting around each app’s quirks just to put an AVI movie on a VCD, when on Windows, Nero Burning Rom can grab an AVI and slap it on a VCD in three clicks. Sure, Nero costs money, whereas transcode and its ilk are free, but with Nero you click three times and you’re done, while even a computer geek like me has to spend a whole morning trying to figure out the command line formats of each command before I can even begin, and then spend time experimenting with it until I get it right. Most people would rather pay for convenience than have to suffer for a free program.

So here’s the deal: I’m no longer going to hold Windows against Windows users. If you know about Linux but still want to use Windows, it’s your choice. There are risks and costs in that, of course, such as exposure to viruses, and widespread software licence fees, but if you simply want your computer to work, and are willing to pay to have that happen, then more power to you. I know that learning the things required to truly get the most out of Linux is, frankly, at the bottom of the list of importance for most users. And that’s fine. Everyone gets what they want, and what they’re willing to invest: time, in the case of Linux, or money, in the case of Windows. In the meantime, Linux and open source developers will keep closing the gap between the two platforms in terms of usability, and we’ll talk again in a couple of years and see how you like us then.

One last thing, though: please, for the love of all that is holy, stop using Internet Explorere and Outlook! I can forgive and understand Windows use in general, but there’s just no excuse to keep using two such amazingly insecure and buggy pieces of software, when there’s better alternatives out there that are free and available for Windows. Give Mozilla Firefox, or maybe Opera, if you really want to pay for your software, a try, instead of IE. And while you’re at it, check out any of the dozens of mail clients available for Windows, such as Mozilla Thunderbird, The Bat, Opera’s M2, and lots more, all of which are faster, better, and much more secure and less succeptible to virus infestation than Outlook. And if all you use Word for is school reports and letters to grandma (and maybe occasional flyers and stuff), and if all you use Excel for is to balance your house budget, please, give OpenOffice.org a try before you shell out nearly $500 for the latest version of Microsoft Office. You might be pleasantly surprised. Just because you’d rather use Windows is no reason to deny yourself the advantages of Open Source software.