Interesting Article - "Ubuntu made me quit college!!"

Alfred alfred.s at nexicom.net
Tue Jan 20 00:45:22 UTC 2009


Hi: Prior to playing with Linux I used to play with MS Agent Stuff. With
a few add ons to it I crafted some websites that Talked the message. In
8.10 there not being Dial-up set-up now, without a lot of reading, and
trouble trying to make things work, I think some sort of "Clippy" might
be nice. There's Gnome PPP and other PPP setups, but it's a problem
trying to use 8.10 when it can take weeks to get the Internet working,
because without it, I can't get the information I need to do the set-up
in the first place, without using an older computer and an older version
of Ubuntu. There used to be a Plugin for Mozilla that allowed viewing MS
AGENT Scripts, I don't see one for Firefox, and at the time I made use
of MASH, and MUSE. It might be nice if Linux had something like this.
Then some sort of Interactive Help System could be launched, and then a
NOOB might be able to get it working in a few minutes. Right now I'm not
using 8.10, I'm just gathering the information, and printing it out, so
that one day in the distant future, I can turn on my 8.10 Box and get it
working on the Internet with Dial-up. My ISP told me that it might take
them 5 years to get High Speed Internet to my domain, I hinted that
perhaps by that time the Internet might be Obsolete, supplanted by
something else. :( 

I'm not sure of the Process that is used to come up with new versions of
Ubuntu. Often, I'm not all that happy when some sort of interface that
worked very well, is removed in a new version. Is it a problem of having
things ready by s certain date? When an Artist Paints a Picture, and it
is not quite finished, by say April 2009 does that Artist publish it
anyway? At first in Early versions, a Set Publish Date may have been the
incentive for some Navel Gazers to get it together, because time was
growing short. Linux is getting much more complex now, Code is much more
Complex. Might there be some merit now to getting the Job Finished, and
Perfect, and then Publishing it? Then there would be much less "teeth"
to Articles that BITE, like this one.

Alfred!
-----Original Message-----
From: David Tremblay <david at ngowiki.net>
Reply-To: The Canadian Ubuntu Users Community
<ubuntu-ca at lists.ubuntu.com>
To: jtgoguen at gmail.com, The Canadian Ubuntu Users Community
<ubuntu-ca at lists.ubuntu.com>
Subject: Re: Interesting Article - "Ubuntu made me quit college!!"
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:46:40 -0500



On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Joel Goguen <jtgoguen at gmail.com> wrote:
        -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
        Hash: SHA1
        
        Victor Mendonça wrote:
        > Article
        > http://actionnooz.com/news/?p=2870
        
        
        <rant size="big" temper="upset">
        *deep breath*
        I've seen this same thing in half a dozen places, and every time
        I've
        said the same thing: this isn't the reaction we need, this isn't
        interesting, it's sad.  Nor is this the whole story.  Check out
        http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9667184 for the
        original story.
         It has a little more information that the others "neglected" to
        put in
        their stories.  What isn't said here is that MATC offered to
        help her
        re-enroll and set up OpenOffice to save in MS Office formats by
        default.
         They even offered to accept her work in whatever format works
        with
        whatever software she has installed!  I wish I could do that, if
        I don't
        send things in exactly the format requested I get asked to
        re-send.
        Verizon discs don't work with Linux she said - but Verizon said
        that
        while some advanced features and the installation discs won't
        work, she
        can still use Verizon Internet.  They're even sending (or maybe
        by now
        it's "They have even sent") a technician to get her up and
        running.  If
        Dell actually did tell her to stick with Ubuntu, they may have
        been
        trying to save her money and time, but a good tech would have
        talked to
        her to determine if keeping her on Ubuntu would be a good idea.
         It may
        be hard to believe for some people, but Ubuntu is not the ideal
        solution
        for every single person in the world, and even among Ubuntu
        users it may
        not be the single best solution for all situations.  If I were
        to set up
        a firewall box, or a gateway, I wouldn't hesitate to choose
        OpenBSD.
        Perhaps a better idea for this woman would have been to send her
        Windows
        and offer to help her dual-boot if she wanted to.
        
        Overall, MATC and Verizon are willing to help her, providing
        support
        that I simply can't get from my educational institution or from
        either
        ISP in my area.  I had to go through my manager's manager to get
        the
        university IT department to post the settings needed for me to
        connect
        to the university wireless network.  They just kept telling me
        that
        "Linux is not supported", even though some of their own staff
        use Linux!
         And I work for them.  I would hate to think of the hassle
        someone else
        would have had to go through.  Now, because of my near-constant
        harassment, they've recognized that Linux users are people too
        and set
        up a wiki.  Still no support, but at least now Linux users have
        a
        (poorly advertised and not well known) place to go to see what
        other
        Linux users can do to help them.  As for her Internet problems,
        she's
        still getting better support than what I could ever hope for
        here.  They
        recognized that Linux is capable of connecting to the Internet,
        that
        alone is more than I could hope for here!  If I go to either ISP
        and say
        "Linux" I get told, depending on the technician's experience and
        knowledge, anything from "What's that?" up to "Sorry, Linux
        can't
        connect to our network, you won't be able to use our services
        without
        Windows".
        
        The responses to this article were perhaps the worst of all.
         I've never
        seen such shameful behaviour or such terrible responses to
        someone's
        questions, and I've been on the OpenBSD mailing lists when
        Richard
        Stallman posted one of his "GPL 4-evar! You are doing it all
        wrong!!1!one1!" posts.  These aren't the responses that are
        going to
        attract people to Linux.  This young woman's problem is the sort
        of
        thing that happens frequently (although usually not with such
        drastic
        ends as dropping out of school!) and it's the sort of thing that
        gets
        sorted out by friendly, helpful Linux users.  This article was
        the
        chance for Linux users (specifically Ubuntu users) to show the
        rest of
        the world why Ubuntu is a good choice - to show people that the
        community will come together and help people solve problems, as
        it so
        often does on the mailing lists and the forums.  Instead, the
        community
        (not our community on the forums and mailing lists
        thankfully...) came
        together, but it came together to form a wall pushing people
        away.  How
        many new users, non-technical users like Ubuntu seems to be
        aimed at and
        good for, are going to see this and not use Ubuntu, or any
        Linux?
        </rant>
        
        Now...I'm open to people telling me I'm wrong.  If I am, at any
        part, I
        hope someone will point it out.  I also hope that this can fire
        off a
        discussion about what happened here and what could be improved
        in Ubuntu
        or in the Dell ordering process.  Things that could become
        submissions
        to Brainstorm (either Dell and/or Ubuntu Brainstorm) or bug
        reports/feature requests.
        
        
        

You are mostly right, somehow the reaction to the news is the problem...
things happens and even if she's not the sharpest tool in the shed,
people should have refrain to attack her. Not everybody care about
fixing a computer (whatever the OS) and in case of problem many people
will simply buy another box because the OS, the software, the hardware
with all those strange words are just part of those things that can't be
understood, people just want to click have a result . 

That said, ubuntu preloaded computer should come with a little video on
how to set stuff up (especially the internet). It may be silly but there
may be some use for Ubuntu Bob or  Clippy the gnome kind of stuff 


But I'm sure that kind of feature won't go far in votes in
brainstorm... 



-- 
David Tremblay

IT analyst
mob: 418-208-3631
jabber: ict4ngo 
skype : ict4ngo

Blog : http://blog.ngowiki.net





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