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#26 2008-06-13 01:02:10

koch
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2008-01-26
Posts: 369

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

moljac024 wrote:

And some need to game (but we don't really need that kind of clientele wink ).

thanks! so i have to delete my xp-partition which exist for 2 reasons, gaming and girlfriends job. smile or i have to quit arch sad

ermm, in this case this comes to my mind...

ph0tios wrote:
peets wrote:

I was disappointed when I was shopping for a fridge. All fridges had features I liked and features I disliked, and I was unable to build my own with all the right features. The freedom of linux gives weird habits.

Unfortunately, this has been my problem with girlfriends.

but think she won't be happy if i'll stay with arch...

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#27 2008-06-13 02:01:43

Berticus
Member
Registered: 2008-06-11
Posts: 731

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

Hmm...  tough...  I'm not sure if the one I put up in the first post was worse.  Because who else would think that the hardware market would be that dependent on the software market?  It's basically saying without a software market, there would be absolutely no hardware market.  I mean sure there's a correlation.  People always want things to be faster, and as software gets heavier, we need stronger hardware to make things faster.  But mostly it's the software market the trails the hardware market, because you need the hardware to develop the software...

But yeah, those two are definitely something...  What gave him or her the idea that it was entirely written by newbs?

Speaking of things going faster, where I'm interning, we have this machine called a Flock of Birds.  It's just a computer with a CPU clock speed of 133 MHz or something like that, I think 64 or 32 MB of RAM, a transmitter and some big magnets.  It's so old, it uses the original DIN keyboard (so probably mid 90's) connector and runs MS DOS.  Now I must say, that thing boots up blazing fast!  Two seconds, and you're ready to go.  The only thing to boot up faster in my experience was my very first Gentoo installation, which took like half the time.  Was quite surprised with how proficient some people were with MS DOS....

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#28 2008-06-13 16:22:24

schivmeister
Developer/TU
From: Singapore
Registered: 2007-05-17
Posts: 971
Website

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

1. Linux is for programmers only.
2. Huh? Windows is also free.


I need real, proper pen and paper for this.

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#29 2008-06-13 16:42:00

xaw
Member
From: Chapel Hill
Registered: 2007-08-09
Posts: 177

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

1. It's an operating system for virus writers/hackers
2. Only crazy researchers use it (I find this one funny because it implies we're all mad scientists ;-) )
3. Using Linux makes your computer do strange things (like have hardware failures)


The water never asked for a channel, and the channel never asked for water.

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#30 2008-06-13 16:46:14

moljac024
Member
From: Serbia
Registered: 2008-01-29
Posts: 2,676

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

koch wrote:
moljac024 wrote:

And some need to game (but we don't really need that kind of clientele wink ).

thanks! so i have to delete my xp-partition which exist for 2 reasons, gaming and girlfriends job. smile or i have to quit arch sad

Not really what I wanted to say. I meant people(or, kids) that use the computer ONLY for gaming and perhaps a little browsing. Those that see a PC as a gaming device. We don't need those users until they "mature" smile


The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But if they tell you that I've lost my mind, maybe it's not gone just a little hard to find...

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#31 2008-06-13 17:04:24

freakcode
Member
From: São Paulo - Brazil
Registered: 2007-11-03
Posts: 410
Website

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

If you act like a zealot, starting that boring talk to people about switching Linux, you will start hearing all that lame excuses, and more. Don't you get it: the lame excuses are a signal for you to stop bothering them.

Hell, let them use whatever software they (like) need!

Last edited by freakcode (2008-06-13 17:07:50)

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#32 2008-06-13 17:14:27

freakcode
Member
From: São Paulo - Brazil
Registered: 2007-11-03
Posts: 410
Website

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

sniffles wrote:

/me ponders about opening a "Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to BSD" thread

I never got that whole "convince people to switch to linux" thing. It's usually newbies who do it, feeling they have to spread the word about their 'new found love'.

One more thing: regarding this thread, it somehow assumes people are supposed to give You reasons for not switching to Linux; and that assumption is lame.

That's because who is interested in BSD, is interested on UNIX. While people who use Linux nowadays, are mostly teens that wanna show how rad' they are for not using Windows, or some really affected people who think free software is a religion.

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#33 2008-06-13 17:48:16

Berticus
Member
Registered: 2008-06-11
Posts: 731

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

freakcode, people still give a reason to not use Linux whether you try to convince them or not.  If you're just doing something and someone see's what you're doing, they'll be like, "oh what is that?  Linux?  I use Windows because..."  For example, two years ago when our class had an issue with OOo:

That's why everybody should use the user friendly Windows and not Linux

Or people nowadays talk about computers casually and will say, "Yeah, I had this problem where..."  Supposedly it's something common with Windows, but I can just chime in with, "oh...  Yeah, I have no clue what you're talking about.  I don't use Windows."  Then they assume you use Macs, and I'll be like, "no...  I use something called Linux."  Freshman year of college I had the best room in the building for parties.  It was a wet dorm, far away from the RA, no monitoring RA, and the biggest room in the hall.  I had my computer playing the music since I had decent speakers.  Everybody always asked what I was using.  I wasn't convincing them to switch.  It just so happens I use Linux all the time and people saw what I was using.  You don't have to try to convince people to hear lame excuses.  People just offer them.

While people who use Linux nowadays, are mostly teens that wanna show how rad' they are for not using Windows, or some really affected people who think free software is a religion.

Wow..  that's definitely among most retarded reasons I've heard...  Before I ever help someone switch to Linux, I ask them why they want to do it to make sure they're ready.  So far, everybody has had a good reason to switch, so I help them.  Not one single person has told me it's because everybody uses Windows and they want something different.  Everybody wants Linux for the user experience they get.

I even asked some of the people at my university why they chose to use Linux.  They said it was because of what it had to offer.  They were getting fed up with Windows, and was seeking for an alternative solution to computing.  Since they were going to reformat anyway, they chose to try out Linux.  What they found out was that Linux worked better for them.  It's not like someone was like, "hey dude, I've got Linux and it's totally cool because I don't follow the crowd.  You should check it out; all the cool kids are doing."  I've actually never heard anybody do that, it's not a replacement for drugs or anything.  Which even then, I've never heard anybody say, "hey kid, here's a joint.  You should try it, all the cool kids are doing it."

That's because who is interested in BSD, is interested on UNIX.

That's also a lame explanation.  I've been interested in a triple boot involving Windows, Linux and BSD.  I've installed BSD, and I thought it was pretty nice.  I did because I was distro-hopping (to find an operating system that I liked completely) and BSD was one of the ones I really liked.  I'm not sure exactly, but I think I decided to ditch it because the release cycles were too slow (FreeBSD).

lame, lame, lame, LAME!  freakcode, you're over generalizing way too much here.  I hope you don't do this with everything you encounter.

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#34 2008-06-13 20:04:37

floke
Member
Registered: 2007-09-04
Posts: 266

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

"3-D spinning cubes just ain't natural"

<friend of mine>

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#35 2008-06-13 23:53:20

kensai
Member
From: Puerto Rico
Registered: 2005-06-03
Posts: 2,484
Website

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

schivmeister wrote:

2. Huh? Windows is also free.

LOL, oh, man, you made my day. This is so sad and true.:lol:


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#36 2008-06-14 00:13:24

freakcode
Member
From: São Paulo - Brazil
Registered: 2007-11-03
Posts: 410
Website

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

Berticus wrote:

That's because who is interested in BSD, is interested on UNIX.

That's also a lame explanation.  I've been interested in a triple boot involving Windows, Linux and BSD.  I've installed BSD, and I thought it was pretty nice.  I did because I was distro-hopping (to find an operating system that I liked completely) and BSD was one of the ones I really liked.  I'm not sure exactly, but I think I decided to ditch it because the release cycles were too slow (FreeBSD).

My reply was to sniffles, but also, that phrase isn't even mine. It's common sense for everyone who uses BSD if you ask me.

For the rest, I can tell you that it's very real - and very annoying. At least here in Brazil. I know a lot of Linux users here that are somekind of paranoic "switch to Linux" weirdo. Think "get a Mac" campaign. It's _that_ annoying.

Then, it defeats the purpose when you need to enumerate technical, economic or strategic reasons where Linux is better - your manager will just think you are another of that weirdos, and won't take you serious.

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#37 2008-06-14 00:28:04

Berticus
Member
Registered: 2008-06-11
Posts: 731

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

Brazil is hardly a majority...  At least in the US, from my own personal experience, no one's ever done that.

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#38 2008-06-14 03:30:31

arkay
Member
Registered: 2008-05-23
Posts: 79

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

I'd love to sit back and say "use what you like" but I get annoyed when I see people constantly frustrated by "what they like" and they don't even realise it's happening to them.

It's far worse being a support bitch to MS users and whether you like it or not if you know your stuff you're going to be supporting a number of people.

Personally I see advocating Linux to be more about removing market share from MS.  Not necessarily because I don't like Windows but because I don't like what MS have done to the computing industry in general over the past 20 years..   Everything was going along just nicely before they arrived and to me the last 20 years are an abnormality, a glitch in a future that should be far better than it is as this point in time.

Technology has the ability to advance life for all of us, MS used it to advance profit and twist all associated markets into a gravy train that didn't need to innovate.  Very few people are better off with the desktop and application software they use on 90% of that market share.  The sad thing is that most of them grew up with it and don't realise just how bad it is.

Seeing a serious reduction in market share for MS will bring more and more development to Linux and the open style of that development will lead to greater and faster technological advance.

There are some peoples minds that you will just never change.  A lot of people get curios just by seeing what you do with a computer that they cant.  I get a line of people walking past my office desktop daily asking questions.. I'm certain there's about 5 guys installing Arch this weekend that didn't even know it existed till yesterday.

You certainly can't change a closed thinking persons mind, and I agree to not try with people like that for the most part. But I think that there are more open minded people than closed and the closed will always follow the herd.  When the herd is not using Windows, they won't be either.

I'm a moderator on another forum and I often post the virtues of Linux.  It's a pro MS (Media Center) site for the most part so I cop a bit of a battering, but I know at least I've open the minds of thousands of people to an alternative.  Whether they stick with it or not the seed that maybe Windows isn't all that good is what I really want planted.   MS had their day and didn't do much with it as far as I'm concerned.  I'm just annoyed that I had to wait 20 years for the rest of the world to start seeing what was so blatantly obvious when they released that crapola win 3.11 that was just an app on top of dos.... Rubbish.. All of it, has been all along.

Cheers,

Arkay.

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#39 2008-06-14 05:51:03

jonlandrum
Member
From: Jackson MS USA
Registered: 2007-11-05
Posts: 3
Website

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

Berticus wrote:

Brazil is hardly a majority...  At least in the US, from my own personal experience, no one's ever done that.

Actually, Brazil is one of the most fast-paced adopters of Linux, much faster in my opinion than the current rate in the US.

And the only BSD users I know are using it because it's basically free UNIX. MacOS was BSD based before this past release. And honestly, BSD and Linux are astoundingly similar. I mean, they're not the bad guys.

Edit:
And I've never gotten any lame excuses for not switching to Linux, I've only gotten weird looks when they find out I use Linux. My brother was convinced for a long time that I was a "hacker" (which is a compliment, honestly, but he meant it in the sense of "cracker".) Of course, almost everyone I know is in the cult of Mac. So to them, I'm not hip enough. Just a square computer geek. yikes)

Last edited by jonlandrum (2008-06-14 05:56:49)


\\// Live long and prosper.

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#40 2008-06-14 07:32:49

Sole
Member
Registered: 2007-04-09
Posts: 42

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

schivmeister wrote:

Windows is also free.

This.

and, "Linux is just like windows, isn't more secured and it looks exactly like it"

It's not the "excuse" that annoys me, nor I care about people switching to linux, I use both windows and linux myself and I also have a mac, I encourage my siblings and friends to try other OSes, I encourage people to use whatever they would find comfortable, but some people, especially people who never touched other OSes other than windows really have some misconception of what linux really is, conversation usually ends with "Windows for me is free anyway, linux is a waste of time, drivers support suck".

Seriously, some of my friends rather spend half of their day formating their computers because their computer is running slower, and they dare to tell me linux is a waste of time and I'm wasting my time on it roll

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#41 2008-06-14 08:24:25

moljac024
Member
From: Serbia
Registered: 2008-01-29
Posts: 2,676

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

Sole wrote:
schivmeister wrote:

Windows is also free.

This.

and, "Linux is just like windows, isn't more secured and it looks exactly like it"

It's not the "excuse" that annoys me, nor I care about people switching to linux, I use both windows and linux myself and I also have a mac, I encourage my siblings and friends to try other OSes, I encourage people to use whatever they would find comfortable, but some people, especially people who never touched other OSes other than windows really have some misconception of what linux really is, conversation usually ends with "Windows for me is free anyway, linux is a waste of time, drivers support suck".

Seriously, some of my friends rather spend half of their day formating their computers because their computer is running slower, and they dare to tell me linux is a waste of time and I'm wasting my time on it roll

Well, Gentoo IS a waste of time big_smile


The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But if they tell you that I've lost my mind, maybe it's not gone just a little hard to find...

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#42 2008-06-14 08:49:59

jryarch
Member
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 45

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

celthias wrote:

1. The classic "I HAVE used Linux. About 5 years ago. It was crap."

Yep, so familiar. "You had to do all kind of packaging dependency stuff, and downloading and installing an .exe from a site is just too easy!"

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#43 2008-06-14 09:02:50

jimmy512
Member
From: London
Registered: 2008-05-25
Posts: 16

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

Well, Gentoo IS a waste of time big_smile

I wouldn't say Gentoo is a waste of time - you can leave the computer on overnight compiling if you need to. This is quite like saying that arch is a waste of time, and we should all use Ubuntu because that configures everything for you and comes with everything installed.

I found Gentoo quite fun, and if you have the time, it can teach you a lot about your computer and how Linux works, which is not a waste of time.

People should use what is best for them, be it a Mac, Linux or a Windows machine. What annoys me is when people see no alternative - like saying there is only Windows and nothing else.

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#44 2008-06-14 09:48:14

karoshi
Member
From: Marburg
Registered: 2008-02-26
Posts: 182

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

I wouldn't say Gentoo is a waste of time - you can leave the computer on overnight compiling if you need to.

So, Gentoo is a waste of energy and money?
Gentoo = Climate Killer Number One hmm


It's a bug planet!

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#45 2008-06-14 13:49:18

Berticus
Member
Registered: 2008-06-11
Posts: 731

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

I just unmount stuff when I can't continue, and then remount it the next time I work on it...  Although now I'm pretty good at setting up gentoo and can get it in a day.

Anyway, thought this was an odd reason:

I'm just an investor, but I don't understand why you care at all about free software when all the money comes from boxes. No real business is going to use open source products when you have corporate options. And instead of writing this blog, you should spend your time fixing the share price.

Found it here: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/not_a_flash_in_the

Search for the word linux, and it should be the first thing that comes up.  'tis a shame Linux won't be able to use ZFS due to licensing issues.

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#46 2008-06-14 19:10:22

freakcode
Member
From: São Paulo - Brazil
Registered: 2007-11-03
Posts: 410
Website

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

jonlandrum wrote:
Berticus wrote:

Brazil is hardly a majority...  At least in the US, from my own personal experience, no one's ever done that.

Actually, Brazil is one of the most fast-paced adopters of Linux, much faster in my opinion than the current rate in the US.

Thanks for pointing that. If I told that, no one would believe...

Popular markets here sell computers with Linux installed because it's a government program, to try lowering computer's price so population can afford one. But, mostly users are already adapted to Windows, so that Linux gets replaced by a pirated Windows copy anyway... neutral

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#47 2008-06-14 19:53:30

Berticus
Member
Registered: 2008-06-11
Posts: 731

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

freakcode wrote:
jonlandrum wrote:
Berticus wrote:

Brazil is hardly a majority...  At least in the US, from my own personal experience, no one's ever done that.

Actually, Brazil is one of the most fast-paced adopters of Linux, much faster in my opinion than the current rate in the US.

Thanks for pointing that. If I told that, no one would believe...

Popular markets here sell computers with Linux installed because it's a government program, to try lowering computer's price so population can afford one. But, mostly users are already adapted to Windows, so that Linux gets replaced by a pirated Windows copy anyway... neutral

Wow, that's pretty lame...  Don't even give a try?

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#48 2008-06-14 22:53:54

freakcode
Member
From: São Paulo - Brazil
Registered: 2007-11-03
Posts: 410
Website

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

Berticus wrote:
freakcode wrote:
jonlandrum wrote:

Actually, Brazil is one of the most fast-paced adopters of Linux, much faster in my opinion than the current rate in the US.

Thanks for pointing that. If I told that, no one would believe...

Popular markets here sell computers with Linux installed because it's a government program, to try lowering computer's price so population can afford one. But, mostly users are already adapted to Windows, so that Linux gets replaced by a pirated Windows copy anyway... neutral

Wow, that's pretty lame...  Don't even give a try?

... and the ones who don't, act like "make the switch" fanatics. Including people from inside the government, that doesn't generally take much credit from the population anyway (corruption, scandals, etc.). That's what I was talking about: that kind of attitude from the entusiasths, and the support from the government (that population is skeptical with) only makes people want to NOT use Linux. They consider the PCs sold with Linux are just an obligation to sell the with a pre-loaded OS, and to make it cheaper, so people can install their own pirated copies of Windows on it anyway. That theory is reinforced when you see that they use unknow, unsupported Linux distros on those PCs, instead of using something like SuSE, Ubuntu, etc.

Last edited by freakcode (2008-06-14 22:55:38)

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#49 2008-06-15 02:37:50

Redroar
Member
Registered: 2008-03-17
Posts: 200

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

An "unknown, unsupported" distro is perfectly fine, in particular if you *know* the hardware works, and is preconfigured. This is the case for off the shelf boxes, so that's not a big deal (at least not to me).

"Make the switch" people from all camps (Where I live Mac people are typically the worst offenders, and the few people I know who use Linux are usually pretty quiet about it. Sometimes Mac/Windows people try to convert me when they notice I use Linux though!) are annoying as hell. If the majority (or even the minority) of linux users in Brazil are like that, then even I would probably be ticked off enough by it to use something else. Probably some BSD.

Oh, and the lame excuse.

"But OS X surfs the web faster" -honestly, I have no idea. This was on a 15/2mb university network. There's no damn difference.


Stop looking at my signature. It betrays your nature.

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#50 2008-06-15 11:21:18

Obi-Lan
Member
From: Finland
Registered: 2007-05-23
Posts: 179

Re: Lame excuses you've heard not to switch to Linux

Our sales usually wants to sell Windows because its easier in their world of thinking "You get product for price X and you can sell it for price Y". Linux is free so its quite hard to sell it for price Y. They could get better price from linux because they can sell more work which has better profit but its just too hard for them to understand it. I think their biggest argument is that "Linux has thousands of security holes and Windows only few".

Another aspect is that from our companys 10 IT "professionals" (including me) no one can really do and maintain any big or complex linux environment. They see me to be the only Linux "guru" in our company because I have done couple web servers and one mail server based on linux (mostly because customer really insisted to use linux and they couldn't sell windows). If you ask anyone else to do something linux stuff they just raise their hands. So its quite troublesome if customer needs something to be done for their server (or it goes down for some reason) and I'm on vacation or doing some else big project. So I get sometimes calls "This linux thingy has crashed what do I do?".

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