Trolls' Purpose 13467

If you remember Tucker automobile, he was derailed by FUD spread through radio and the news media, that the vehicle didn't even have a backup gear and several other mistruths. He could never get his car off the ground, so effective was this campaign, even though he had a superior automobile to offer. That campaign was fueled by the automobile manufacturing industry, to limit compebreastion.

IMHO, there is a campaign to hurt, destroy, kill, prevent Linux from getting off the ground. Some are ignorant individuals who in their twisted logic do this out of their simple nature. Others have a deeper motive, that if Linux becomes accepted universally among the mbuttes will spell profit loss toward for pay operating system software and some vendor specific application and support utility software.

Linux is a usable operating system, KDE, Gnome and a few others are suitable desktops, Open Office and other open and proprietary office automation suites are mature products and fully suited for deployability.

Seven years ago, while outfits like Corel were packaging their distribution version 1 of Linux, KDE and Gnome were fully functioning while Windows 98 and NT-4 were in vogue. KDE had some bugs in applications such as their mail program, but still it was quite usable. Sun's Star Office Version 1.0 then was fully useful, another option to WordPerfect Office, Microsoft Office and IBM's offering. Just like any new kid on the block, it had to gain acceptability. KDE was very Windows-like, Gnome was easy to use and anyone familiar with engineering workstations would feel comfortable with Gnome. There was sufficient development of 3rd party software to fill the niche of most if not all for work productivity.

I was amazed at the stability of Linux, it did not crash and freeze up when running applications like Windows 98 and NT did occasionally. One did not have to reboot their machine after playing an intensive graphic animation game. Graphics were more fluid. If an application crashed, it did not take out the operating system. One just restarted their application.

However, as a desktop it did not take off fully, although portions of education sector accepted it, some smaller businesses and some scientific sectors put it to work. Some of this is because of industry reluctance to trying anything new. Similar to Tucker, some of it I believe is attributable to FUD.

So, some do have an agenda to discredit Linux. Not all behind the keyboard are simpletons begging for attention.

However, there are allies. One is some Governments who favor open source as a compebreastor and a way to bring open standardization, another is sectors of corporate industry, who see it as a way to limit a monopoly and bring open compebreastion and profitability back to their sector.

Another ally is people who debunk FUD. I am not overly concerned about this newsgroup, because back in the day of Tucker, the average citizen had no way to voice his or her uncensored opinion. News media chose whether to publish or not publish one's views. Nowadays, we have a way, that is through the reply function.

One other often overlooked ally is also the written word. A well written, tactful letter at the right moment to politicians, education principals and company leaders can have an impact to open doors for cost savings and stability in IT infrastructure through Linux as a desktop and further server functions.

There is another overlooked issue with personal desktop operating systems like Windows in this forum. Even Windows requires a certain amount of competency to install, patch and maintain. I have had to help people both at work and at home get hardware to work by reinstalling drivers, downloading and installing driver patches to correct hardware malfunctions due to bugs, unsquirrel an application deinstallation that went badly or not at all, reconfiguring printers to work, get network shares and modems to work, even sometimes reinstall the OS, etc.

Not everyone is computer literate. If they struggle with Windows, then they will struggle with Linux also.

-- HPT