Preface the First
I'll begin by saying that I wish people would get off MySpace and put their blogs somewhere else. I'm sick of advertisements flashing around my reading material and I'm sick of my customers coming to me saying they clicked an ad and their computers filled up with spyware shortly thereafter. MySpace is a whorish website which exposes the true nature of Microsoft theology: do nothing you're told to do and you won't have problems, which is backward and stupid.
Folks, learn about RSS and get with the program.
Preface the Second
Now I'll say that I'm one of Dell's biggest detractors. Even in a market vastly populated by low-grade, cheap hardware being sold off at high prices and being called "quality" materials, Dell makes some of the worst computers a person can buy. Proprietary motherboards, power supplies, and cases don't make anybody's lives easier. We should strive for standardization, especially in a world dependant on the solutions sold to them and even more especially in a world where the buyers of technology have little to no tech knowledge, so the purchase decision can be based on bottom-line price, not what a biased, sales-oriented website tells a person.
But lately, Dell has shown some promise.
The Bulk of It
What you can gather from above regarding my opinion on the end-user desktop computing market is:
- Knowledge of the subject is generally minimal
- You can't expect the entire world to be a tech nut
- People should at least attempt to keep up with tech trends (like RSS)
- PC sales are based on advertisements, not truth
- Windows, while a functional OS, creates far more problems than it solves
Further, you can gather that I'm a Linux enthusiast. By no means am I an expert. But I am a geek for it. And I do believe that the ideas behind it embody the solution to many problems. Linux, especially amongst the Debian family of distributions, is all about community. Community support, community development, community involvement. It's all free for distribution and mostly free of charge.
Imagine this utopia: You live in a town. You have a tomato farm. Your neighbor ranches chickens. The guy across the street can grow wheat and turn it into flour. Down the road there's a dude with a huge building. Everybody takes what they make and puts it on a shelf in the building. When you need something, you walk in and take it. Most everybody contributes. The contribution is the price of the product that you take. It's the same concept behind Ubuntu and other Linuxes.
No viruses, no spyware, no bugs. Linux is robust. Linux doesn't crash. Linux doesn't cause unfixable problems.
And now Dell is putting Ubuntu Linux on a small portion of PCs that they sell. This may be the one thing Dell has ever done right. Will people buy it? Maybe. Maybe a geek like me. Should everyone buy it? No. But most people. Should Linux be bigger than it is? Yeah. Definitely.
What experience do I have that allows me to make this claim? I do desktop support for PCs that people buy. A good 80-90% of peoples' PC problems are the result of Windows. These customers are frustrated with Windows. They're as sick of Windows as I am sick of flashy ads urging me to put a pie in Britney Spears's face when I'm reading my friends' weblogs. Linux is a solution for this. I offer it every time. Sure, you could call that moonlighting, but is it really so wrong to do that? I don't think so. I use Windows for two things: commercial video gaming (read: gaming that costs money) and programming in Windows-only programming languages. Aside from these two things, Linux does everything else I could ever want to do.
What keeps people from using Linux? It has a bad rap, and I know why. Windows is sold to a buyer. Linux is not sold at all. It is given. With all the benefits of Linux, the fact that it comes at no cost seems too good to be true. So I understand the skepticism. I am, after all, a master of cynicism. Also, Linux has this "geek chic" culture surrounding it. So a buyer thinks, I am not a geek. I cannot use Linux. I will be lost. And they knock it before they've tried it.
Dell can help solve this problem. The problem is, after all, an issue of image. PC sales are based on advertisements, not truth. Advertisement, I believe, can allay the lack of knowledge about the product. If I stand on a soapbox here at my blog, or if I show up at Starbucks with a stack of Linux Live CDs and purport to know that I hold in my hand the end-all, be-all of computer problem solutions, who will listen? No one. Because I'm just a guy. I'm a geek. I get Linux. My response, of course, is, "Do you get Windows?" No average PC user can honestly say, "Yes." So what's the friggin difference?
But if Dell advertises to the masses saying that Linux is a solution for a good 70% of the PC-using population, they can convince people. Whether they'll do this or not will be left up to Microsoft, I fear. If Dell makes claims that Linux is better than Windows (in other words, if they speak the truth), and their efforts succeed, they'll be shooting themselves in the foot, considering all their profit comes from the fact that they pre-install Windows Vista on damn near every PC they sell.
Dell can help. I'm willing to take a step back from my anti-Dell ranting to allow them time to perfect their "open" product line and fix their company.
In conclusion, I propose that people comment here on things Linux does not do or things that Linux does not make user-friendly, or encase in a GUI. That way I can prove you all wrong.
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