Part of it is about Ubuntu Users too

Part of it is about Ubuntu Users too

Posted Aug 20, 2008 16:56 UTC (Wed) by bfields (subscriber, #19510)
In reply to: Part of it is about Ubuntu Users too by dowdle
Parent article: In defense of Ubuntu

One thing that annoys me about Ubuntu is that it has brought a lot of Windows users to Linux[....] They want everything to work and they don't want to have to learn anything.

That describes most desktop users. Heck, it describes me. Sure, I enjoy learning new programs or fixing the occasional bug more than the average user, but most of the time I just want to be able to do my web browsing, printing, writing, photo-management, and, OK, kernel hacking, without having to learn a ton of other stuff along the way.

Everybody's got work of their own to do, and even the geekiest of us eventually run out of patience with the rest.

It all boils down to... does the overall Linux community gain much from the mass, somewhat transient influx of users that Ubuntu has given us?

As long as we can still effectively triage bugs, keep the forums manageable, etc., I think it's potentially very useful to have examples that show what can go wrong when a user with experience X attempts task Y. We should find ways to encourage and take advantage of such reports.

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quote:

One thing that annoys me about Ubuntu is that it has brought a lot of Windows users to
Linux[....] They want everything to work and they don't want to have to learn anything.

for that matter this even describes Linus in many areas. he initially build his entire system
himself, but switched to using commercial distros with the a.out -> elf conversion. he's been
very adamant about not caring much about the details of userspace code and just wanting it to
work so that he can get on with what he's interested in.