Human relationships are complex and evolve over time. In my life I have witnessed various stressors that can cause breakdowns in relationships:
- smoker v non-smoker
- long summer vacation by car or canoe
- building a house or buying a car
- choosing colours
- teaching another to drive a car or use a PC
The Blog of Helios has a current entry about teaching another to use a PC, this time with GNU/Linux.
Having been a teacher, I have introduced students and staff to GNU/Linux many times. The younger the student the less difficult the task… Young people do a lot of things for the first time, for good or evil. Everything is new to them and change is a constant. By the time an adult has been using that other OS for a decade, it can be very difficult to lead them to change.
It does not help that everyone around an adult has been using the same OS for a decade or that that other OS hides stuff like filename extensions, partitions, or file paths. Fortunately,, with GNU/Linux most users are encountering GUIs and it’s point and click with an icon as an abstract representation. There is not that much difference until you actually try to find something… It really helps to name folders with human-readable clues. I sometimes stick the date into the filename where I have a bunch with similar names or use long descriptive names. Then there is the “/” v “\” thing. Curse M$ for developing that bit of lock-in. Fortunately GUIs can be managed with rarely having to type in a slash.
My “significant other” used a handful of notes on foolscap with detailed instructions how to do anything for a PC for more than ten years. She can handle XP now without the notes but I worry about the day that she goes to GNU/Linux. Until now her job used M$-specific software even on a web-interface. That is changing as the industry adopts open standards. Her next PC or OS change will likely be to GNU/Linux and I may plan a vacation at that time and leave it to another member of the family to do the hand-holding. I am too old for divorce.
Fortunately, the world is filling up with young people for whom migrating to GNU/Linux is a welcome, refreshing change. The current generation of young people will live in a world where there is choice in computing platforms. There are many forces leading to that result. One of them is exposure to GNU/Linux in schools. Another is the access to GNU/Linux on low-priced gadgets (smartphones are getting to that state soon…). In North America the success of Apple shows young people that there are other ways of doing things. After a person learns their second language a third is much less difficult because the major concepts carry over. Malware and prices of licences are major costs of IT that GNU/Linux answers well.
The bottom line is that patience pays. Given enough time the world will accept GNU/Linux much more widely and IT will be much more interesting. For a long time many will have access to two or more operating systems even on a single PC and an unlimited number via the network.
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- Wallpaper a room together
With everything that life can throw at a relationship, that one was the one that came the closest to marital meltdown for me.
I sometimes wonder how the future will look upon the madness Microsoft created. Security holes increase in direct proportion to the number of users? 100,000 node Botnets a fact of life? Criminals are responsible for poor security, not the vendor? Repurchasing the same OS every 3 years with the same results as previous years (except with 50% more shine)? Allowing one vendor to control the desktop environment of the World’s computers?
It’s one thing for ignorance to allow a mistake to happen. It’s another to let it propagate long after the consequences of that mistake are clear. We never should have allowed Microsoft take control of our computers.
Actually, “We” didn’t. IBM jumped into the PC game and granted a monopoly to M$, which made an instant monopoly with business. There were competitors but IBM was huge in business IT at the time and all the little guys wanted to follow IBM’s lead. In those days a decent PC cost thousands of dollars and mostly business could afford them. When they became more affordable, individuals wanted what was used at work. About the time the rectangular regions of screen interacting with processes became popular, it was all over. We saw in US DOJ v M$ the length M$ went to cement the monopoly which was allowed to operate unfettered for a decade. The US DOJ took so long and was so ineffective that the monopoly is pretty solid just coasting. All M$ has to do now is whisper that someone could be cut off the gravy train and they fall into line. Fortunately there is a constantly growing flood of individuals, small businesses and a few large businesses gradually claiming ground.
Even if IBM never went into the PC business, we’d still have a monopoly, with CP/M instead of MS-DOS
Don’t bank on Linux in schools leaving a lasting positive impression. It might even have the opposite result, leading children to start resenting Linux early. I still remember using Apple II computers in my elementary school. I found them quite crude compared to the TI 99/4a I was using back home. Still do.
My students like fancy/pretty, too, but they lack patience and drool at the speed of GNU/Linux systems. I have students rush to class to use the PCs during their breaks. Going back to XP on thick client is a “jarring experience” because it is so slow. My system relies heavily on the terminal server having most of the code already in RAM that is needed to login or start an application-instance. Even using old PCs as clients, windows pop open with no noticeable delay. Login, which takes minutes on XP with 40gB drive takes 4s. I have had students fall out of their chair in surprise at how fast things happen when you ask the old PCs to do less to get the job done (just showing the pix and sending the clicks was trivial even in the 486 era). The terminal server having lots of stuff in RAM does very few seeks on a SCSI RAID and the task is done. Even on a thick client, GNU/Linux kicks XP’s butt because I minimize the unnecessary eye-candy, don’t phone home and don’t scan every access for malware.
That’s why people bring me their PCs in all kinds of conditions and straight-out ask me to install GNU/Linux. They or their children were impressed by what GNU/Linux can do compared to that other OS.
Somehow I doubt any kids are falling out of their chairs considering they are too young to remember the speed of old computers.
Many schools are using P4s with XP and 40gB drives. These machines can take 2 minutes to login to usable desktop whereas as a thin client it may take less than 5s using GNU/Linux. The kids do time-wasting things like tipping back in their chairs. They can be taken by surprise. I make it a point to warn students but sometimes there is someone new in class…
I have seen all kinds of responses: denial (It’s a trick!), mouths dropping open, fear (Has malware taken over?), guilt (Did I do something wrong?), amazement (Staring for a moment of two in disbelief.) but eventually they realize this is the way computers are supposed to work, quickly.
One of the exercises I do with Computer Science students is to demonstrate the raw speed of even an ancient PC, say 10 years old. They know this is an old PC but then struggle to find a task they create by programming that takes longer than the blink of an eye. They begin to appreciate the value of a MIPS and begin to doubt the Wintel paradigm that PCs slow down or need to be replaces every few years. It no longer makes sense to them to waste a valuable resource with bloated software doing unnecessary things. Many of them have seen Vista on a new machine run slower than XP on an older machine. They can relate to this.