Kclug Digest, Vol 34, Issue 3

[RtX]

While I see Earle's side in this, I must somewhat agree with Jonathan's
stance on this. I think that one of the biggest hurdles people coming from
the MS world to Linux is laziness. Let me explain.

When my father purchased his first x86 computer, (Windows 3.1 / MS-DOS 6.2)
he knew nothing about computers and had to spend the time in a book to learn
DOS and Windows and how they interact with each other. He had to spend the
time to read and learn about how to install drivers, edit config.sys and
autoexec.bat, and modify Windows to do the things that he wanted to do.
Since then, he has only had to learn the fairly minor differences between
Windows versions through the years to keep running his programs and doing
the work he does on his machine. If you think about it, everyone had to
learn basic computer fundamentals when they started no matter what version
of Windows that was. We all had to learn the Operating System stuff.

For many people, it's been years since they had to learn an Operating
System. They learn the differences in new Windows versions, but most of what
people know about the previous version can be applied to the new version.
When people decide to try Linux, they are saying that they want to learn a
new Operating System, yet most people don't think about it this way. They
try to apply what they know about MS operating systems into Linux and simply
fail out of frustration because of it.

Those that DO understand that they are learning a new operating system, and
spend the time to read and ask questions to learn it, are wanted in the
Linux community. Those people that don't understand that they are learning
an new operating system, and don't seem to want to learn it, they just want
it "to work" are the very people that I think Jonathan is talking about.