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| title | date | tags | |
|---|---|---|---|
| About the Linux Community | 2006-04-19 |
|
I’ve always sort of compared the Linux community to the Ham Radio community of a previous generation. I can say this both as a dedicated Linux user and as a ham. The Linux community is as diverse as any. There are going to jerks and snobs. There are going to be people who demand that everyone compiles everything from source or use an archaic distribution, and there are those who are happy just installing everything from a Knoppix CD. The people and the support are there, and since we are living in an online world, it doesn’t really matter a whole lot where the help physically comes from. Quite frankly, I’ve come to embrace the Linux community more than any other online, because there are so many of newbies who want to learn and who want to help each other out. Open Source is a new frontier, and many of us just want to help each other out.
I was a Mac user for around 6 months. I had a 500mhz G3 iMAC. It ran OSX 10.2 well, though slowly. I experienced more putdowns and snide remarks about my ancient hardward from the Mac community than from anyone in the Windows or Linux community. Maybe, I just happened to run into a few jerks, and everybody else is cool, but I really got the feeling that Mac users just used their computers to do the basics, and very few really questioned how things worked. “It just works” is (or was) an Apple motto. Those who got everything to work, never questioned it. If your scanner doesn’t work with OSX, don’t worry, Apple will gladly sell you an overpriced one that will do everything you need and you will never have to configure anything manually.
In the Linux community, a lot of things don’t work right. We come into Linux expecting that fact, and so we are there to help each other.
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