Freespire's Google ads: "What is Ubuntu Missing?"

[Adam Glenn]

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I agree that there are many people who have the opinion "if it  
doesn't work out of the box it might as well not work at all". That  
doesn't make them correct. In a free democratic society you can't  
just ignore the laws you don't like, but it is very possible to fight  
to have them changed. I think that both choices are too big for  
Ubuntu to tackle in every nation that has potential users. The third  
option they've come up with seems to be a pretty good solution to me.  
A new user doesn't need to look hard to find the answers about how to  
get Java, mp3, or the plethora of video codecs to work. Sure it does  
mean you'll have to look but I believe that what we need to change is  
people's expectations about their computer and what it does, not the  
distributions' principles. One of the reasons that Windows users  
don't tend to look for answers for themselves is because they were  
trained by the Microsoft machine that answers (like software) cost  
money. We need to empower people with links and skills to search the  
knowledge repositories and teach them to not be afraid to ask  
questions in the forums/irc/mailing lists. I know we all want the  
same thing, to help people realize the stranglehold that the larger  
operating systems have on the current market but we also need to  
respect our peers in the market. I don't have to agree with someone's  
license but I do feel obligated to respect it to the best of my  
understanding of it. Once we convince the users that "yes, you will  
have to look" but "no, the answers will not be hard to find" then I  
think we're heading in the right direction.


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