Interesting Article - "Ubuntu made me quit college!!"

[Joel Goguen]

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Victor Mendonça wrote:
> Article
> http://actionnooz.com/news/?p=2870

<rant size="big" temper="upset">
*deep breath*
I've seen this same thing in half a dozen places, and every time I've
said the same thing: this isn't the reaction we need, this isn't
interesting, it's sad.  Nor is this the whole story.  Check out
http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9667184 for the original story.
 It has a little more information that the others "neglected" to put in
their stories.  What isn't said here is that MATC offered to help her
re-enroll and set up OpenOffice to save in MS Office formats by default.
  They even offered to accept her work in whatever format works with
whatever software she has installed!  I wish I could do that, if I don't
send things in exactly the format requested I get asked to re-send.
Verizon discs don't work with Linux she said - but Verizon said that
while some advanced features and the installation discs won't work, she
can still use Verizon Internet.  They're even sending (or maybe by now
it's "They have even sent") a technician to get her up and running.  If
Dell actually did tell her to stick with Ubuntu, they may have been
trying to save her money and time, but a good tech would have talked to
her to determine if keeping her on Ubuntu would be a good idea.  It may
be hard to believe for some people, but Ubuntu is not the ideal solution
for every single person in the world, and even among Ubuntu users it may
not be the single best solution for all situations.  If I were to set up
a firewall box, or a gateway, I wouldn't hesitate to choose OpenBSD.
Perhaps a better idea for this woman would have been to send her Windows
and offer to help her dual-boot if she wanted to.

Overall, MATC and Verizon are willing to help her, providing support
that I simply can't get from my educational institution or from either
ISP in my area.  I had to go through my manager's manager to get the
university IT department to post the settings needed for me to connect
to the university wireless network.  They just kept telling me that
"Linux is not supported", even though some of their own staff use Linux!
  And I work for them.  I would hate to think of the hassle someone else
would have had to go through.  Now, because of my near-constant
harassment, they've recognized that Linux users are people too and set
up a wiki.  Still no support, but at least now Linux users have a
(poorly advertised and not well known) place to go to see what other
Linux users can do to help them.  As for her Internet problems, she's
still getting better support than what I could ever hope for here.  They
recognized that Linux is capable of connecting to the Internet, that
alone is more than I could hope for here!  If I go to either ISP and say
"Linux" I get told, depending on the technician's experience and
knowledge, anything from "What's that?" up to "Sorry, Linux can't
connect to our network, you won't be able to use our services without
Windows".

The responses to this article were perhaps the worst of all.  I've never
seen such shameful behaviour or such terrible responses to someone's
questions, and I've been on the OpenBSD mailing lists when Richard
Stallman posted one of his "GPL 4-evar! You are doing it all
wrong!!1!one1!" posts.  These aren't the responses that are going to
attract people to Linux.  This young woman's problem is the sort of
thing that happens frequently (although usually not with such drastic
ends as dropping out of school!) and it's the sort of thing that gets
sorted out by friendly, helpful Linux users.  This article was the
chance for Linux users (specifically Ubuntu users) to show the rest of
the world why Ubuntu is a good choice - to show people that the
community will come together and help people solve problems, as it so
often does on the mailing lists and the forums.  Instead, the community
(not our community on the forums and mailing lists thankfully...) came
together, but it came together to form a wall pushing people away.  How
many new users, non-technical users like Ubuntu seems to be aimed at and
good for, are going to see this and not use Ubuntu, or any Linux?
</rant>

Now...I'm open to people telling me I'm wrong.  If I am, at any part, I
hope someone will point it out.  I also hope that this can fire off a
discussion about what happened here and what could be improved in Ubuntu
or in the Dell ordering process.  Things that could become submissions
to Brainstorm (either Dell and/or Ubuntu Brainstorm) or bug
reports/feature requests.

- --
Joel Goguen
Ubuntu User #15951
When we help, we benefit
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