[KLUG Advocacy] Reactions to the Reuters article and related folly.

[Robert G. Brown]

>> I would expect that no one will be shy about commenting on my impressions,
>> opinions, or other comments. 
>Here's one:  SHUT THE HELL UP!!!  ALL OF YOU!!!   :-)
At the meeting last night, I made a couple of suggestions to Bruce that
would facilitate such postings in the future, at least from my point
of view.

>I posted the article because it was nice little fluff article to
>encourage newbies to try Linux.  It said that Linux is easy to install,
>and newbies can use it to replace Windows.

Well, it might have been a nice little fluff piece, but it was full of a
lot of old inaccuracies and half-truths, and was full of what I tend to 
call "Damming with faint praise". I've shown the article to a couple of 
people who are not particularly Linux (or Window) oriented, and asked 
them a few questions about it, one of them being about whether they 
were more or less encouraged to try Linux. The answer was "No". I was 
a little surprised at this, and the degree to which they had observed 
what I had.

>Then all you guys come along and nit pick the hell out of the article,
>erasing any credibility the article might have had with newbies, and
>scaring them away from Linux!!!
Bruce, you chuck a link out there of which you have a good opinion and
specific intentions (and don't write about). You *KNOW* you're tossing
it into a forum that is full of nit-pickers, free-thinkers, and people
who challenge just about everything....

What do you expect?

You *KNOW* that managing Linux folks is like herding cats; I was amused
by Mr. Gray's "Cat managers kit" (or some such) a few messages back in 
the thread. If you want to spin a particular article or presentation,
even a bit, there are some things that can be done in that direction.
You didn't do any of them.

>Sure, I know some of the nit-picky points aren't 100% accurate, but so
>what!  It's a nice propaganda piece to encourage the switch to Linux!
I think a number of the points made indicate otherwise, not only by
myself, but by other people. 

I would agree that putting every article under an electron microscope and
examining it for every detail and nuance of consistancy and industry 
truth is somewhat unrealistic, and by that measure, we go too far. I
held my comments for a long time on this thread (for practical as well
as thread-related reasons), and said what I had to about the article
briefly and in overview. As such I'm not sure if you include me in the
set of people you're addressing in your response.

>And it's basic jest is true, than Linux is now easy and can replace
>Windows on the desktop!  PERIOD!
Perhaps, if you presented the link with your impressions and intended
audience in mind, the response would have been different. I know the
readers didn't get the point you make here out of the article, and
when I pointed it out, they said something like "Oh yes, look at that!
it was buried in all this other stuff."

							Regards,
							---> RGB <---