General: BBC in Covering Technology Badly Shocker.

What a great way to start my week, but with a rant about a BBC article on Linux. I will be the first to admit that Linux isn’t quite ready for consumer consumption - but it’s certainly very close. If Mr Parkinson wanted to actually give Linux a go, he should have researched a little more - like I don’t know, asking any of the thousands of Linux users out there who would have given him some wonderful advice and probably filled the holes in his article. The first thing they wouldn’t have recommended is to try replacing the stock distribution on an EeePC.

Trying GNU/Linux is made very hard because it is such an organic product - not only are there thousands of distributions, but there are new releases of each every 6 months or so. Trying Windows is easy, you can move from machine to machine and find everything exactly the same, and there are only a finite number of versions available. So when people keep harping on about the EeePC running Linux, they assume that just like Windows, everyone that uses Linux uses what the EeePC uses. “What? So our server admin uses THIS? Hmm - I thought Macs were simple.”

As far as I’m concerned - the EeePC doesn’t run Linux. It certainly doesn’t run Xandros as the article suggest. It may have been based on Xandros, but it is not a complete operating system - it is stripped down and designed specifically for the EeePC with its own interface, just like the operating system on your phone is designed for your phone. It is not designed to be expanded, except by the Asus specific update tool. Complaining that you had to open a terminal to do something the device is not designed for is misleading to the public. For the majority of situations now, you do not need to open a terminal in a complete Linux OS.

The article continues, with his biggest complaint that he can’t synchronise with his iPod. Ok - so that much is true, it doesn’t. But this is the fault of Apple, who feel they have to control everything with their DRM and force people to use their music software. Why do you think very few Linux users have an iPod? There is no freedom with your music if you own an Apple music device. That’s why I still buy CDs and rip them myself, so I’m in control. The writer then suggests that we never see iTunes on Linux because Apple don’t follow the same “hippy mentality” of open source. Software does not have to be open source to be available on Linux - it can be a closed binary, just like the nVidia graphics card drivers. Apple just don’t want to. Of all people to understand what it is like to have a small control of the OS market - it’s Apple. And considering the Unix origins of Mac OS, would it really be that hard to port it?

His piece reads like he’s giving Linux a thorough test. If this was his intention, then using the EeePC was a big mistake. However, the fact the WiFi didn’t work in Ubuntu? Valid and annoying, which is why I still recommend looking up Linux compatibility before making the jump. Equally, he could have tried the EeePC specific remix of Ubuntu, which as the drivers already installed.

I guess if this chap had written this anywhere else, I could forgive elements of it. But having pride of place on the BBC website, it is very damaging to Linux’s reputation and misleading to the public. It’s not a review, or look at Linux - it’s a blog of one man’s struggle to make a device (yes, the EeePC is a device) do something it shouldn’t. I’m sure if they had enabled comments on the piece - there would be some angry comments there at the moment. Sigh.

Originally posted on ITPro.