Why My Shop No Longer Sells Linux. 5234

On Wed, 19 Oct 2005 14:50:13 -0500, Lin¿nutlin¿nut

Don't overreact to this. The OP was commenting on human nature not on Linux.

Normal human behavior is to master just enough of a technology so that it solves their problems. They figure out how to do a task and then they expect to do it the same way forever. They may not know how something works they just know that it works even if it doesn't work well. Animals do the same thing. My cat figured out that if he climbs up on the roof and jumps off onto the back deck I'll hear the thump and let him in. He could just meow, that would be easier and less painful, but he knows that jumping off the roof works so that's what he does. If he were human he would probably continue to use Windows no matter how many times he got a virus, because that's what he would know how to do. The OP mentioned that he had customers complaining that they couldn't run AOL on Linux. Why would anyone want to use AOL in 2005? The Internet is the Internet and Linux has lot's of browsers that are light years ahead of what AOL provides. The reason is that there are lots of people who first encountered the net through AOL, like my cat they've learned a means of accomplishing a goal and they think that that's the only way to do it. What the OP found out is that the vast majority of his non-technical customers are exactly like my cat, they expect a computer to work a certain way (the Windows way) and they can't imagine another way. His decision not to offer Linux to non-technical users is probably the right one from a business point of view. Unless he is willing to give these users a training clbutt (which would blow his profit margin) there is no way he can make money selling Linux machines to people who can't spell OS.