[if(is_geek)…]

Once again it seems that someone in Linux-land is missing the point. Linus Torvalds, the original writer of the Linux operating system, is now encouraging users to use the KDE desktop environment because Gnome is developed by "interface nazis"who spend too much time targeting "dumb users". Personally, I think that these developers of Gnome are a lot smarter than many of the developers of other Open Source projects.

Not a day goes by without some Linux zealot or another bitching and moaning because so many people use Microsoft Windows, and Microsoft is evil and Bill Gates killed their kitten (the most outrageous zealotry finds a home amongst the script kiddies on Slashdot). If most of these people would get over themselves for a moment they might realize that there is a reason why so many people use Windows. Do you think your average beancounter gives two shits about being able to reassign the mouse buttons to different actions? No, he wants to open his spreadsheets and muck about in them. Most people who use Windows do so because it just works – the way they are used to, the way they expect it to, the way that makes sense to them.

What makes no sense, is how Torvalds can be such a proponent of Linux on the desktop and yet be so completely out of touch with what the vast majority of desktop users want in an operating system. Linus himself said that he thought Linux would crack more into the desktop realm back in 2004. Maybe the reason it hasn’t is that he and others like him are so wrapped up in their own importance that they cannot conceive of the possibility that not every computer user is a power-user or even that not every power-user cares about having every single option available in a file manager window.

I’m a programmer, easily a power-user to anyone’s definition of the term. 90% of what I want to do in the desktop environment is simple and straight-forward. The 10% that is advanced, if I cannot do it from the file manager I open a command line and do it there. I certainly don’t decide that the whole thing is useless. I am a huge fan of Ubuntu Linux these days. The main reason for this is that everything just works better than in the other distributions I have tried. I run it on my laptop and setting up wireless networking was a breeze! Does Gnome in any way inhibit my work? Not at all.

If Linux is going to be taken seriously on the desktop, then every effort has to be made to meet the needs of the masses. Zealotry helps no one. As for Mr. Torvalds, people should take a whole lot less stock in his opinions. Yes, he wrote his own version of the Unix kernel as a school project. Thank him for that. But using the Linux community as a way to keep himself ( and those like him ) feeling elite and better than everyone just to overcome the shame of not being able to get a job at Ikea only makes it more difficult for Linux to be taken seriously.