This may be a bit stream-of-consciousness, apologies…
I just read a post about a proposed addition to Ubuntu 10.04 - Ubuntu’s integrated music service. This sounds pretty good to me. Additionally, I can see that it might start to make people think about, at the very least, giving Linux a try. So far so just-what-it-says-in-the-link. My thought is really about the burden on a user such as myself when things like this happen. Why? Read on.
When I was a Mac user it didn’t really matter what I said about them as Apple’s marketing machine was quite capable of swaying opinion without my help. Ditto for Microsoft (the effectiveness or otherwise of the Jerry ‘n’ Bill ads notwithstanding). With Ubuntu I feel it does make a difference what I, and all other Linux users, say and do. If someone looks over my shoulder on the train and sees me using Gnome on Ubuntu they would probably be interested to find out what this non-Windows thing I was using was. If they see me using the Awesome WM under Arch Linux they will probably shake their head and look the other way at what a luddite I am. It doesn’t matter if I know that the command line is more pwerful, or that getting rid of distractions and unnecessary processes makes I and my laptop more productive. People will want a free alternative if it looks like something they already know.
At my old job I was running openbox. All was set up nicely except that I had to drop to the command line to connect to a Windows share. Someone came over and asked to see a document, I popped up a terminal to connect to the server and retireve the document and they said (in essence), “this is so much harder than using Windows, why bother”. Forget the fact that it was actually quicker to go from start to open document, forget the fact that all the software I was using was free, this was ‘harder to do’. Had I popped up Nautilus and clicked on the shared drive and browsed down to the file like I would have on Windows, I’m sure the impression I’d given would have been that it was at least as easy as Windows. And it’s free!? Sign me up.
Because of distros like Ubuntu, Linux is making ground. I’ve had quite a few people say, ‘oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to try that out’ when I’ve mentioned I use Linux. I’m pretty sure they meant Ubuntu, and I’ve always straight away arranged to get them a CD to try it out.
My overall question is - as a proponent of Linux, and someone who will happily bang on about it to others, what pressure is there on me to use a distro like Ubuntu? Is it something in the makeup of a Linux user that makes them try and make life hard for themselves or is that just me? Ubuntu does all I need and more so why don’t I be a good global citizen and use it, help to promote it, make it visible? I think its the ‘and more’ that puts me off (see last post about Arch), but I don’t think I could really say why I feel the need to economise on RAM, processor use and disk space when I have more than enough to spare.
I’m not really sure what I’m even saying here, but I think there is a sea-change in the offing, and Canonical may well be the ones to boot Linux into contention for once. I’m just not sure what my role in it should be, but I genuinely feel I can play a role in this, something I never felt with Apple or Microsoft. What’s a boy to do?