Dvorak Likes Linux

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2342703,00.asp

by Zoasterboy • 17 years ago

19 6 17 years ago

Long time Microsoft supporting, Mac Hating columnist says: "The critical mass has been reached. Go download Ubuntu 8.10 and see for yourself what the fuss is about. You won't regret it."

ZeroGravitas• 17 years ago

Well that was a surprisingly sensible article. Looks like we could be heading for a tipping point. Or the apocalypse. One of the two anyway.

ahpeeyem2• 17 years ago

A couple of people I know currently have computers that are basically unusable because of problems with malware on Windows. I'm thinking of suggesting using Ubuntu to them, but I'm pretty sure they will hate the idea.

Of the people I have introduced to to Firefox and OpenOffice.org, some adjust and like using the free software, but some people revert back to IE or go and buy MS Office almost immediately. They seem to just really hate change of any kind.

Another example is the number of people complaining every time Facebook changes their UI -- the last two big changes I've been impressed at how well thought-out the changes were, but there was still those groups of people complaining and wanting things to go back to how they used to be.

Why do some people persist with what they're used to in spite of annoyances like malware? They've had to change to what they're using now at some stage, so what is it that makes them change? Is it only when something different allows them to do something they couldn't do at all before, like say a Firefox extension? Are these people more "feature driven"?

loumf• 17 years ago

I tried to get my wife on OSX or Linux. Big problem for Linux was no Quicken (she's very particular about how she manages finances). GNUCash wasn't there yet for her -- she probably could have lived with the feature set, but the UI was making her want to break things.

The other problem is that she takes online classes and they tend to use packages that have very fussy browser support. I wouldn't trust that it would work on Linux without a thorough test -- don't want to find out you have a problem during a timed test.

Mac was rejected on cost (she went with a sub $600 laptop).

ahpeeyem2• 17 years ago

Yeah, I can appreciate why people don't switch when there's something they need to be able to do (eg. Quicken or online classes) that they couldn't with the new software.

But it seems to me that some people are just resistant to change and won't go to something new unless there's a compelling positive reason, ie. to do something new, and a negative reason (avoiding malware) won't suffice.

rbanffy• 17 years ago

It now seems Dvorak wants to test the Windows fanboy crowd for how many pageviews they are able to generate on a pro-Linux article.

Dvorak Likes Linux

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