The group giving away the free tanks [1] only stays alive because it is staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw customers' attention to this incredible situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:
Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"
Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"
Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"
Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."
Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"
Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"
Bullhorn: "But..."
Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
In the Beginning was the Command Line, Neal Stephenson.
Needed an operating system for a laptop. Grabbed the latest Ubuntu, installed and ...
I had me a working computer without a lot of fussing around, no screwing around with drivers, or software .. it just works. Wireless, power management, all functional. I was expecting a bit of a tussle, a minor headache: the only thing I did 'after market' was to install SSH, Ruby, Rails, SQLite. Copied some scripts over from my Mac that I use to launch SSH and RDP connections at work.
I continue to be amazed that people put up with having to pay big bucks for an operating system.
Apart from parting with cash, paying for anti-malware and anti-virus software, BSODs: what are they getting for that?
[1] In this metaphor, the Linux operating system is a tank.
