Ubuntu Ruined My Life

Tags: , , , , , Posted 2009-01-17 18:07 11 Comments

[There’s a whole bunch of mean­der­ing aca­d­e­mic pon­tif­i­cat­ing and me tak­ing myself too seri­ously. About two thirds of the way down it gets really good, though. I promise. Also, the woman is now online and back in school. –JC]

So appar­ently, some­one was try­ing to take online courses, ordered the cheap­est Dell with a CD — which hap­pens to be run­ning Ubuntu — she could find, and then couldn’t get online to her courses. So she with­drew from the University, and the Linux Lusers rushed in — talk­ing about how dumb she was for not being able to slickly nav­i­gate Linux through cus­tomer sup­port in a Windows-only world, and appar­ently, this degen­er­ated into peo­ple harass­ing her on Facebook.

There are a cou­ple take­aways to this for the world at large:

  1. Facebook works fine on Ubuntu (or the stu­dent in ques­tion has got­ten a dif­fer­ent Dell).
  2. If you aren’t rais­ing your kid to be able to han­dle com­put­ers like a nerd, you are hand­i­cap­ping your children’s abil­ity to prosper.

Obviously, the sec­ond is the con­tro­ver­sial opin­ion. While the new impe­ri­al­ist geek over­lords are kinder, gen­tler over­lords than the rob­ber barons of the past, tech­nol­ogy is a big ugly mess. The de-facto real­ity this illus­trates is that if you are attempt­ing to live in a mod­ern­ized coun­try, but are unable to fig­ure out how to pur­chase and use a com­puter, you are fucked. Those who can­not fig­ure out how to scam Central Services to get online are des­tined to be crushed under­foot in the infor­ma­tion rev­o­lu­tion. It’s an ugly, bru­tal real­ity. Fortunately, when deal­ing with econ­omy, real­ity is what you make of it. There are a cou­ple points for the demo­c­ra­tic wing of the new masters:

  1. There is a con­tin­gent of rav­ing lunatics who have decided to immi­grate to Linux as their cho­sen nationality.
  2. When you smirk at the clue­less n00b, you are the sadis­tic prison guard tor­ment­ing the hap­less inmate. By mak­ing your sys­tem dif­fi­cult for oth­ers to use, you are actu­ally hurt­ing them — not only in terms of time and stress, but also in finan­cially mea­sur­able ways.

But none of that works on the real issue of this story: What was it about the Ubuntu desk­top as shipped with Dell that pre­vented her from going to school? If you haven’t already, find out why our OS didn’t work for her, pub­li­cize the prob­lems, and fix them. If it’s a tech­ni­cal prob­lem then it’s com­pletely triv­ial to fix: we’re all geeks here. If it was a more mushy social rea­son — the bureau­cratic pro­nounce­ments of over­worked sup­port staff at her Uni and ISP: you must use MS Word on Windows (because we won’t sup­port any­thing else)—then that’s some­thing we have tra­di­tion­ally sucked at, but some­thing which com­mu­nity growth could address in an indi­rect way, and B2B schmooz­ing could address in a direct way. Remember, she’s not the only one going through these dif­fi­cul­ties, she’s just the only one who’s dif­fi­cul­ties were severe enough to war­rant a news­pa­per arti­cle on it.

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Comments

  • Lee says:
    2009-01-17 at 7:54 pm

    Please stop con­fus­ing this issue. It’s not about Ubuntu at all; it’s about a uni­ver­sity refus­ing to pro­vide mate­ri­als in the for­mat that some of its stu­dents (i.e., its cus­tomers) need. This is a case of insti­tu­tional dis­crim­i­na­tion, not a tech­nol­ogy case.

  • James Cape says:
    2009-01-17 at 8:27 pm

    Lee:

    Claiming this is a case of “insti­tu­tional dis­crim­i­na­tion” is offen­sive. A blond woman in Wisconsin does not have a right to her (albeit poorly-made, in this case) choice of com­puter sys­tem being sup­ported, and claim­ing it is akin to miss­ing curb cuts, or being denied entry because of race belit­tles those claims of discrimination.

    This is very much about Ubuntu, and how it fits into the world at large: it’s about find­ing out what can be done to make the choice to use Ubuntu the best choice you can make, in every case.

    As an aside, the University’s cus­tomer is soci­ety in gen­eral, and busi­ness in par­tic­u­lar. Students are the raw mate­ri­als.

  • Fabien says:
    2009-01-17 at 9:37 pm

    Well, yeah, we live in a com­pet­i­tive world, and a computer-driven one. So if you can’t han­dle a PC, well, too bad for you: some­one else who’s computer-savvy will, and will take your place.

    If you can walk, drive, read, and use a com­puter, you have far bet­ter chances to get a good place in soci­ety than if you can’t. It may not be a good thing, but it’s true.

  • Adam Williamson says:
    2009-01-18 at 12:36 am

    It was the mushy social stuff. She thought she couldn’t get online if she couldn’t run the Verizon CD — she didn’t real­ize it wasn’t at all nec­es­sary. And her uni­ver­sity had ini­tially told her Word was required for her courses, but it has now said it’ll accept her work in any com­mon office doc­u­ment for­mat. This is more a story about how sad it is that we’ve got to a point where peo­ple just fig­ure that if it isn’t Windows, it won’t work.

  • marku says:
    2009-01-18 at 9:13 am

    and as usual the drive-by media morons made a loud, stu­pid mess of things. i feel sorry for her and for ded­i­cated ubuntu peo­ple who have tried to cor­rect the situation.

  • Jadd says:
    2009-01-18 at 11:35 am

    Whatever.

  • pdusen says:
    2009-01-18 at 3:30 pm

    With every word you make it more obvi­ous that you have no idea the details of the story, nor do you com­pre­hend the mag­ni­tude of the poten­tial fall­out. I sug­gest you find another topic to blather on about before you make fools of us all.

  • James Cape says:
    2009-01-18 at 3:56 pm

    pdusen:

    Since I never claimed to know any­thing about the story beyond the (extremely fluffy) arti­cle and what a few con­tribut­ing mem­bers of Ubuntu had to say, and pretty much directly asked the ques­tion “what hap­pened”, I fig­ure the whole “I’m not omnipo­tent” thing would be implied. Congrats on pass­ing your basic read­ing com­pre­hen­sion test! Go you!

    So please, oh anti-social forum dweller, enlighten us as to the earth-shattering con­se­quences of The Girl in Wisconsin Who Couldn’t Get Online…

  • pdusen says:
    2009-01-18 at 8:54 pm

    I find it inter­est­ing that you freely admit to hav­ing lit­tle detailed knowl­edge on the events in ques­tion, when you cer­tainly seemed to feel qual­i­fied to make a num­ber of assump­tions in your orig­i­nal post.

    I don’t claim to be any more or less qual­i­fied than any­one else, but I can say at the least that I don’t tend to speak unless I’ve researched and ana­lyze facts to back up my assertions.

    Despite your impli­ca­tions on my char­ac­ter, how­ever, I have no inten­tion of insti­gat­ing a drawn out argu­ment with you; in my expe­ri­ence, those are tir­ing and rarely con­struc­tive, and you seem to have lit­tle patience for crit­i­cism in general.

    Have a nice day, sir.

  • James Cape says:
    2009-01-18 at 11:31 pm

    pdusen:

    I think you would be hard-up to define the word “assump­tion” if chal­lenged, let alone iden­tify them in the orig­i­nal post. I fur­ther believe that you are even likely inca­pable of iden­ti­fy­ing my con­clu­sions, let alone one that would be con­sid­ered con­tro­ver­sial in any­thing but its tone.

    What you have demon­strated aptly, how­ever, is the abil­ity to throw wild accu­sa­tions like hand grenades, and then attempt to claim your refusal to stand by your words is on the same moral plane along­side paci­fism, rather than sim­ple intel­lec­tual cowardice.

  • Colin says:
    2009-01-19 at 1:43 am

    I do won­der how one buys a Dell lap­top with Ubuntu *by mis­take*. It’s really dif­fi­cult. http://​www​.dell​.com/ubuntu states all over the place that this isn’t Windows, and you’d bet­ter get Windows if you’re not sure about this Linux thing.

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