I've seen plenty of geek-and-Linux bashing before on it, and this post fed me up.
I'm tired of being everybody's n*gg*r just because I've read a book and written a program and worked to improve myself in my time. All over the stupidest kind of NOTHING: BSD has a command-line. Open Solaris has a command-line. plan9 has a command-line. ReactOS has a command-line. Even the dreaded Windows has DOS, still, after all these years. In point of fact, this site, recently dugg on Digg.com, goes into detail about the command line in Windows XP... and here people are praising it!!! Why??? Because Windows did it, not Linux. Where's all the hatred on Microsoft for keeping DOS around??? HUH? WHERE??? There is nothing special about Linux having a command line at all.
I consider a system lacking sufficient command-line resources to not even be fit for a pig to use, and for that I put up with way too much abuse. Every single solitary byte of software ever used by anybody in the world was typed in on a keyboard, by somebody using some kind of command line in some form or another. (Yes, even IDEs, glitzy as they may be, when it's time to compile the code, there's the box for you to type in what libraries you want, etc. It's just a command line called by a different name.) If you have issues with the command line and the evils thereof, my suggestion is to never touch a computer again, because that's the only way you avoid it.
Most especially Linux. Coming to Linux and complaining about the command line is like coming to Las Vegas and complaining about the casinos.
As for "Yet Another Linux Blog", I have one word to name you: "Hypocrite".
UPDATE: Time has passed since this post, and I let things sit. Then linux-blog.org's author came by to throw a snit. Soon afterwards, another person who "boosts" Linux by never having a single positive word to say, ever, name of Helios, came by to stick his nose in. So now that I'm getting challenged about it:
Here. This is a link to "Windows Power Shell". A Microsoft product. It is selling. People are buying it. It is making money. What does the link say about the "Windows Power Shell"?
"Microsoft Windows PowerShell command line shell and scripting language helps IT Professionals achieve greater productivity. Using a new admin-focused scripting language, more than 130 standard command line tools, and consistent syntax and utilities, Windows PowerShell allows IT Professionals to more easily control system administration and accelerate automation. Windows PowerShell is easy to adopt, learn, and use, because it works with your existing IT infrastructure and existing script investments, and because it runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server “Longhorn”. Exchange Server 2007, System Center Operations Manager 2007, System Center Data Protection Manager V2, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager leverage Windows PowerShell to improve efficiency and productivity."
Oh, look look! If Linux has a command line: BAD, BAD ELITIST EGGHEAD GEEKS WHO RUIN LINUX! If Microsoft has a command line, it's "EASY TO ADOPT, LEARN, AND USE". Folks, how is it that these hypocrites who rip Linux a new cornhole for not being a Fischer Price toy all in the name of being "pro-Linux" get away with this pure BULLSHIT right before your eyes? Search Google for the quoted phrase: "Linux will never make it on the desktop" Does a SINGLE DAY pass on the Internet without this line being posted? Yet you all fall for it again and again.
If we shrinkwrapped Bash and sold it, it would fly off the shelves. Try it yourself, new Linux users. Give yourself a chance. You have 100,000 voices telling you that you're too stupid. I'm telling you that you're smarter than you know.
I didn't start out a geek. I made me one.
I, too, had to cram books and struggle to understand and suffer setbacks and wander into chats asking questions.
All you have to do is give yourself a chance.
UPDATE 12/06/06: For those of you who get a voyeuristic thrill out of a good blog-war, 'devnet' the author in question posted a rant against this post on his site, which together with his comments (since he had such an issue with it on this blog, I posted this time on his dime instead), dug him in ten miles deeper than if he'd kept his big mouth shut.
Among other things, he denies bashing geeks while saying that Linux documentation is "as friendly as an axe murderer at a hardware store.", denied slurring the geek community with the elitist label applied as an insult while his seventh most popular post in his archives is titled "mv elitism /dev/null", and at different places on his site claims both Slackware and Mandriva as his first Linux experience. He also says he had military training, which makes me want to round up some veteran friends and get him in the room with them, to see how long he could go on shooting off his bullshit before he'd get his ass kicked. I'd time it about five minutes.
Have you ever had your doubts about someone, voiced them, and in the ensuing debate discover that far beyond being merely wrong, the person was barking mad as well? That's what's happened here. I don't think he's bad so much as broken, and put it exactly that way. But since there's nothing I can do about it, I posted to the effect of telling his to eat chain, and we'll just have to have our differences and leave each other alone forthwith. God knows, I have better things to do.
For the record: There is another blog, named "Yet Another Linux Blog" (at yalb.net), which has nothing to do with all this. This site hosts a very good blog by a very good geek who sounds nothing like devnet. In fact, this is probably the site I deemed worthy of linking in the first place, and I probably got my URLs crossed to end up with devnet's rip-off. So I will correct my error and now link to the REAL "Yet Another Linux Blog".
The one I'm railing against is hosted at 'linux-blog.org', is *called* "Yet Another Linux Blog", and as close as I can figure it has been the original source of at least 50% of the anti-geek, anti-Linux, anti-learning flamage that I've seen on the Internet for the past two years. Next time you have somebody cussing you out for practicing your honorable hacker ethics as you have been taught, ask them if they got that from devnet. Same goes for the idea that having a command line is a defect, that Linux fans are keeping new users out, that Linux isn't ready for the desktop, is a failure, etc. etc. etc. Every anti-geek flame I've read this century, I've found the original source there.
I'm sorry that it has to be this way. I wish it were different. But man, if there was ever somebody worth coming out against for the sake of differentiating myself from them, this was the right one to choose.
10 feedbacks
Comments:
As for the hardware, the idea is to give them a reason to bash Linux for the lack of hardware support.
Of *course* they don't want our money, because how could they call us unwashed, sandal-wearing, Communistic hippies who don't believe in Capitolism otherwise?
But don't mind me, it's snivel-symphony day with me. I'll be more fun after I get the latest batch of pictures up.
Not only that, but you're calling someone a hypocrite that's been involved with Linux since 1995. If you're basing you calls on one single article I wrote without reading the articles preceding and following that one.
You read one chapter in a book and then proclaimed to the world that the book sucked and no one should read it. You might want to try a different approach.
Why not try reading more articles...there are over 130 to choose from and most are about Linux on the desktop and ALL are pro-Linux. Makes me sick how you jumped all over this without investigating any further than a 2 paragraph article and you act like you know what my blog is all about.
You haven't seen geek and Linux bashing on my blog. If so, please do point out those specific points. In fact, I challenge you to do so.
Why on earth would I bash myself? I'm a Slackware user since the 1.X branch of the Kernel and an AIX System admin. Why on earth would I bash geeks and Linux? I am one and I've always used Linux.
"You haven't seen geek and Linux bashing on my blog. If so, please do point out those specific points. In fact, I challenge you to do so."
Your whole, entire, life is geek and Linux bashing every waking breath of your life. Normally I don't say this to commenters (even our beloved 'chucky', so long deserted), but park your bullshit somewhere else. You haven't spoken a true word since you could talk.
As if I needed proof. You double-proved it yourself right here in one of the *other* posts on my blog you've been spamming.
For the Life of Me, I don't see what you are talking about. It appears you have your jaw set not to like Devnet, and I suppose that is your choice, but man...you are alienating one of the stongest, most knowledgeable and kindest Linux Guru/Advocate we have.
I have read and re-read everything you site and I guess it was one too many Chemo-therapies or maybe the anti-rejection drugs, but I am confounded by your response.
You are both valuable to this community and to those who don't even yet know they need your help.
Let me put it this way. There is a nasty storm brewing on two fronts, and either one of them could legally destroy Linux as we know it. I would hope you two shake hands and work this thing out, cause we are gonna need all the unity and cohesiveness we can muster real, real soon.
helios
"Elitist" is a hate word. Same category as "nigger", "kike", and "fag".
How do you propose to advocate Linux if you are going to deride anybody who gets really good at it as an "elitist"?
How are you going to get Linux adopted if you're going to hate yourself for using it, echoing the Bill Gates battle cry "It's not ready for the desktop"? Oh, it sucks, it still has a command line, you still have to compile tarballs, it doesn't run Photoshop... here, use it?
How can you advocate open source as such a great thing on one hand, but be ashamed of the usage of that source?
How are you going to sell an advanced system and tout it's advanced features, if you're going to demonize the advanced user who adopted it?
Yeah, Linux is attacked on many fronts. Most of all from within. If I'm going to speak out against that, and that makes me a bad guy, then I guess I'll just have to let people hate me for it. This is more important.
If Linux is vanquished, I'll just have to move over to BSD, Open Solaris, ReactOS, plan9, minix... technology freedom will survive no matter what. Let the Linux-haters who want it adopted, but only after it's been turned into "I Can't Believe It's Not Windows!", let them ruin Linux then and have to come to some other freedom system another twenty years from now, where you'll find me waiting and we'll have this same argument again. This is more important.
I thought I explained everything very clearly, in numerous places on my site.
Least of all here.
Here's another site that's finally getting the idea.
You think Linux is important? How about the future development of the human race? Perhaps even it's eventual survival? We can try it two ways. We can insist on trying to make one button do it all, which is another kind of perpetual motion and alchemy study. Remember computers thirty years ago? It was taken for granted that you had to learn SOMETHING in order to use them. So, we've had thirty years of dumbing them down. Today, do you hear any FEWER people saying they don't understand computers? No you don't. You have more! Because there IS NO "EASY ENOUGH"! As long as you keep on the dumb-down path, you're just chasing the string that Gates is dragging around in front of your nose. Can't you hear him laughing at you?
We can go on separating people into Morlock and Eloi. Or instead of trying to make technology stupider and getting nothing but stupider users who don't understand it anyway, we can make the technology as good as we can now and bring the users up to meet the technology.
Because if computers are challenging to some people now, wait til cloning, stem cell medicine, and space colonization is a part of our lives. Wait until the trusting little lambs are so naive that they have no choice but to pay an oxygen tax to breathe, and if they want to live forever on replicated organs, they have to pay for the royalty on their patented method and their DRMed DNA!
I'm sorry, but the way forward is not to dumb the machines down and let people stay dumb. It's keep the technology smart and bring the users up to be smart. After we're gone, somebody, somewhere is going to have to be a hacker to deal with all that great stuff they're going to invent then.
That's the whole thing making Linux great in the first place. It lets people be as smart as they are! But users will never get a chance to see that, if we keep telling them that programming is hard and that they're too stupid to understand it.
But computers are young, and people just haven't gotten used to them yet. I guess my ideas are ahead of their time. Maybe a few generations from now, the time will be right.
Well, keep fighting the good fight. Linux has survived bigger idealogical splits than this, by people much more important than all three of us. As long as we keep thinking small, thinking just about Linux instead of Technological Freedom for all Future Humanity, we won't even have a chance of winning even the small battles. But good luck anyway.
Maybe because that code does things more automatically and with higher functioning????????????
But, OK, let's do it your way. Let's throw our lollypop on the floor and stomp and cry "WAHHHH ITS TOO HARD"
I can't! I can't! I can't! I can't! I can't! I can't! That's all I hear anymore. What a hero you sound like! Yeah, that's who advanced civilization and liberated a country and built up science: people whose sole contribution to life was to say: "I can't!"
"I can't" can drop dead. "I can" will get us to the future.
You wouldn't be able to round up any of them after you pissed all over the flag over at my blog with your lame comments attacking my service. :) http://tinyurl.com/2z39fl
AND BTW, I'd like you to show me where I claim to use Mandrake and Slackware as a first distro...show me that link and I'll give in and retract any posts I've put on my blog.
One last point of contention...I place the axe murderer sentence in my 'about' page: http://tinyurl.com/3xjjed
Notice, in that page, I'm speaking of how documentation isn't friendly (overall) with Linux. Man pages are great to have...wiki's as well. But when they're written mostly in English using terms like "hit the Enter button" it doesn't translate across so well wereas "press the enter button" would. It is in this vein that my comment is made. That's evident if you read it in context instead of plucking it out and making it dance for you.
"God knows, I have better things to do."
yeah, like trashing Linux distros:
http://tinyurl.com/yqxbp5
Way to go Pete! You've successfully attacked a website without provocation, trounced the United States Military service of a Veteran of the Iraqi Conflict, and then tried to justify all your actions admitting no fault for an unprovoked attack on the #1 Google Searched Linux Blog http://tinyurl.com/2s4ykd
Gotta love it :) Actually, I hold little grudge at all...I just don't like you having a platform to sling mud without having a counterpoint brought up. My grudge stopped just after we had our exchange on my blog and you couldn't counter the last comment.
Isn't the main problem with Windows that it is too easy for a user to install software? I.e., "Click her to see ALL OF HER", and people do, and get 0w3nd. At least in a *nix environment you have to stop and think about it for a bit.
Anyway, the problem mentioned in your link wasn't with Linux: the problem was with Canon. As in:
"Hey, Canon! I'm a faithful Linux user, and I'd like to give you money to buy a printer."
"Sorry, kid, no can do. Your money's no good here."
"Whatcha mean?"
"I mean, we'd rather not market to you Linux types."
"Oh, OK, never mind, I'll just go elsewhere."
"Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out."
It's amazing the number of companies out there that don't want to take money from Linux users.