Doodles & Useless Tutorials: A Personal Weblog

A lot of people say calling Debian, Fedora, or Slackware, GNU/Linux opposed to calling it Linux, makes it harder to explain to people.

An example, Bob could tell Sarah “You should use Fedora. It will work with your hardware, it’s fast, and it’s free” Sarah might ask “What’s Fedora?” Bob would tell her “It’s Linux.” and Sarah will just understand. Wrong.

In fact, I get “What’s Linux?” right after I say Linux most of the time.

And, in fact, it is worse when saying GNU/Linux. You get this…

Bob: “You should use Fedora. It will work with your hardware, it’s fast, and it’s free”

Sarah: “What’s Fedora?”

Bob: “It’s GNU slash Linux”

Sarah: “What’s GNU?”

Bob: “Well, it’s a whole lot of applications, like a C programming language compiler, C and C++ library, and a whole bunch of other free software.”

Sarah: “What’s Linux?”

Bob: “Well, Linux is an open source kernel.”

Sarah: “What’s C and C++? What’s open source? What’s a kernel?”

Sarah: “This seems really complicated.”

So here is what I like to say, it’s better, it’s faster, it gives credit to GNU, and Linux. And you don’t have to say “GNU slash Linux.”

When Sarah asks “What’s Fedora?” I would respond with “It’s an OS based on GNU and Linux.” If Sarah happens to ask “What’s GNU and Linux?” I would just reply with “GNU and Linux are free software, that together make an OS, an OS like Windows or Mac.” To go farther “And you can do anything with Fedora, you can use it, change it, and even give it away.”

In short, using “GNU and Linux” makes for a lot of possibilities, and it shows that they are two things put together. And if the person has heard of Linux but not GNU, that person would hear “Linux” and only be curious about the GNU part. And that person would likely treat the GNU part as just a bunch of applications.

Also this way advocates the operating system as Fedora, Debian, Slackware, or whatever distro, more than anything else. So if that person has a problem, she might just do a Google search for something like “Fedora resolution problems.” This would eliminate the difficulties of getting solutions that are for “Linux” like for Debian instead of Fedora, without her knowing it, and them not work.

Also she might search for “Software for Fedora” and find RPMs, and not DEBs.

Hope some of you might find GNU and Linux a much better explanation of the operating system, if you want to give credit to both the Free Software Foundation and Linus Torvalds.

Now, we’ve all probably read this before: http://magazine.redhat.com/2008/05/29/interview-joel-cohen-writer-and-associate-producer-of-the-simpsons/#more-907

Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s Macintosh operating systems have software built-in necessary for tracking and reporting usage statistics. This lets them easily see how much market share they have. And what people are doing on their computers, what software they’re using, what music they’re playing, what files they’re downloading, copying, moving, sharing, editing, etc., that’s why it’s evil, and a bad thing to include in software all together. But it helps them count their market share.

Thankfully GNU/Linux doesn’t include such software. But, we also can’t see what kind of market share GNU/Linux holds. To the statistics, it’s like GNU/Linux doesn’t even exist. We have to find/guess what the market share is.

So, I want to share with everyone, a way to tell when GNU/Linux has entered the mainstream. It’s called “The Simpsons Test.”

We’ve all probably seen the episode of The Simpsons “The Burns and the Bees” by now — where Montgomery Burns (Mr. Burns) attends the Billionaire’s Retreat with Ted Turner, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Mark Cuban, etc., where he tells a story about when he won a professional basketball team in a poker game, and the new arena he plans to have Springfield build for the team threatens to interfere with Lisa’s new bee sanctuary. And due to the Bees, his arena is ruined; making him 400 million dollars short of one billion dollars, so Ted Turner, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Mark Cuban, etc., kick him out of the Billionaire’s Retreat and into the Millionaires Cabin.

Here’s how it works: The Simpsons used Ted Turner, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Mark Cuban, etc., and Bill Gates (a few times) as examples of billionaires.

So… Right when The Simpsons use Mark Shuttleworth — who was the second self-funded space tourist. Shuttleworth founded Canonical Ltd. and as of 2009, provides leadership for the Ubuntu operating system — as an example of a billionaire — although I don’t know if he’s a billionaire anymore, just a billionaire in South Africa, or even close to worth a billion dollars in net worth — or an example of, say “Really rich guys who for some reason travel to space” or something like that.

Or a general mention to GNU/Linux as a “fanboy”, “nerd”, “hard to use” or other kind of operating system. THAT’S, when we’ll know GNU/Linux has made it to the mainstream.

After all, Apple was truely “mainstream” when The Simpsons made fun of them in the episode “Mypods and Boomsticks” though Apple already had a very reasonable market share before the episode thinks to their iPods, iPhones, iMacs, Final Cut Pro, the Macintosh operating system (to a lesser extent,) and other products. But, like I wrote “Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s Macintosh operating systems have software built-in necessary for tracking and reporting usage statistics.” and “GNU/Linux doesn’t include such software.”

I personally hope that the Conficker/Downup/Downadup/Kido computer worm — that surfaced in October 2008 and targets the Microsoft Windows operating system, that activates on April 1st — shows Windows users just how insecure the Windows operating system is, and how slow Microsoft is to react to it, and “patch” it.

The Windows operating system has always been insecure — and I don’t mean as in self-esteem, although :b

When hundreds of businesses stop production because of this worm; people should think about an alternative OS. And, the GNU Operating System is the best choice.

If this worm proves to be very troublesome, what’ll happen?

Websites like MySpace.com, WhiteHouse.gov, Homestarrunner.com — if these servers are infected — will go down. Or, they will become spam websites, displaying advertisements and sending out thousands of spam and denial of service emails.

Thank Stallman Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Wikipedia are running GNU/Linux! These are among the most popular web sites as well, coincidence?

And here is the problem: Websites like WhiteHouse.gov are running the Microsoft IIS web server. And if the WhiteHouse.gov web servers are infected with Conficker, there’s no telling what’ll happen. WhiteHouse.gov is, obviously, a governmental website, and if it becomes a spam website, displaying advertisements and sending out thousands of spam and denial of service emails to other countries, that’s a national threat(kinda).

Certain messages sent from WhiteHouse.gov can cause serious problems, like say “Declaration of War” — although almost all countries will ignore such a message — ordering certain “goods” from countries.

Also, who knows what kinda of other servers WhiteHouse.gov could be connected to. Missile systems, Air Force navigation systems. For things like this, I don’t want Microsoft involved at all.

WhiteHouse.gov is likely running the Microsoft IIS web server because the person they have in control of the servers, the “web master”, only knows how to use Microsoft Windows. That’s a problem.

So I hope; that Conficker takes down these websites, and does the things I mentioned. And people start to realize that they should have been using GNU/Linux like the people who were left alone, safe and sound, after the worm came and gone, did its thing(s), websites like Google, YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Digg, Vimeo, CollegeHumor, etc.; and people like myself and hundreds of thousands more.

If this happens, GNU/Linux might actually become mainstream, maybe even over night.