As a long time Linux user, I’m constantly trying to get people to experience all the awesome. For the most part, people are reluctant, but I’m finding that I run into one or more of the following
It seems pretty clunky
So you’ve finally installed Linux, most likely Ubuntu as I praise it for it’s simplicity and you start bitching about how the UI seems slow. Turns out you installed it on some machine from 1997 that should have been thrown away or donated to someone that’s never had a computer to gauge it against. Linux is in fact a modern operating system at this point and does deserve to be ran on modern hardware. Will it run well on older system? Yes it will, but to benchmark it against your $3,000 Macbook Pro is dumb. Install Linux on a modern PC and get modern results.
None of my applications run on Linux
What you probably meant to say is “I’m so old and decrepit that I can’t learn new things so I can’t acclimate to an environment without some shitty Adobe or Microsoft application”. Don’t get me wrong, there are some pieces of software that just don’t have an equivalent for Linux (cough Ableton Live cough), but for the most part, everything else has about 10 alternatives and at least a couple of them are better than you’re willing to accept. Don’t blame Linux if you built your career around a proprietary application, that’s your fault.
So I downloaded some source and can’t figure out how to install it
You must have forgotten that I recommended Ubuntu for it’s ease of one. One such easy to use feature is the Software Center. There seems to be this preconceived notion that to install anything in Linux you have to do it from source. So far from the truth it’s not even funny. Even if the software isn’t in the repositories, there’s a great chance that there are distro packages available (.deb, .rpm, etc). You can usually double-click those packages to install them. The only software I ever compile is something I’m writing / modifying, everything else is a click away.
So yeah, I wish my Linux converts would stop making this harder than it has to be, or at least stop playing into my evangelism and praise the system they are enslaved by.
