I’ve been a geek for a good long time, possibly from the get-go. When did geekdom first manifest? When I wired my bedroom with a central command box that allowed me to turn the lights and the radio on and off? (That I didn’t burn the house down in the process, and/or electrocute myself, remains one of those tantalizing mysteries.) Was it even earlier when I gutted our old RCA New Orthophonic High Fidelity player and removed the amplifier and hooked it up to an external turntable we picked up at an Army surplus store? When I made a crystal radio (with my Dad’s help; I was all of about seven at the time.)
Computers and I were a foregone conclusion. I was an early adopter; a Kaypro job running CP/M gave way to a Macintosh SE, and then computer after computer after computer to the present state of a gleaming set of three high-end Macs and a good-quality Dell laptop running Windows 7. Not to mention the iPad, iPhone, iPods, Kindle DX, universal remote, laser printer, hi-def TV, and two audiophile-grade stereo systems—one for my home office, and the “main” job in the living room.
Not only did I buy and use computers, I even programmed the suckers. My eartraining software remains at use at SFCM; it has grown a bit long in the tooth but it runs just as well as it ever did. It requires Windows, but it will run reliably even on a Mac using CrossOver Mac. I did a good job on that software; it’s solid stuff. We don’t use my registration software at SFCM any more, but for some years there my digital brainchild took care of our student record-keeping needs.
And I still create web sites—my own, my department’s at SFCM, and the site for Ensemble Parallèle. I’m a Dreamweaver guy and I prefer to do a lot of my design directly in HTML rather than depending on wimpy visual aids. My sites even incorporate my own home-made Java code for some simple gizmos like picture rotators and the like.
I’m hell on wheels with a number of apps, including Sibelius, Keynote, and iMovie, and I can get around just fine in Logic Pro, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and quite a few others.
In other words: I’m the real thing, a geek true to form and function.
So when I say I don’t see any point in desktop Linux, I’m not being a grump. I really don’t see any point in desktop Linux unless you’re just so goddamn poverty-stricken that you can’t afford to buy a computer with an operating system installed already, if you’re an über-geek for whom leisure time consists of building computers from scratch and compiling your own operating system for said scratch computer.
But most people buy a computer with the OS installed and that’s what they use. That’s what I do, and I’m a bonafide geek.
Linux may offer free open-source applications, but you can get those for other operating systems as well. Linux systems tend to come with Firefox installed for web browsing, and Thunderbird for e-mail. Those are both open-source, free applications that you can download for use with Windows or the Mac as well as Linux. Linux systems come with music players; PCs and Macs can both use iTunes and VLC, and Windows folks might like to use WinAmp. Video and DVD players: got ’em for all platforms.
But you can’t use Sibelius, Finale, Logic Pro, Dreamweaver, Microsoft Office, iWork, iLife, Avid, Pro Tools, Photoshop, and a bevy more of important apps on Linux. There might be some quasi-replacements, but even OpenOffice reminds me of MS Office 1997 or so. For musicians, Linux is nearly impossible.
Then there is the issue of useability. Occasionally I fire up and upgrade several Linux distros using an emulator (VMWare for the Mac.) The latest Ubuntu looks better than the old one, to be sure, but it still looks like Windows 95 with a funny color scheme. Worse, the installer still insists on stopping at various points during the installation and asking stupid questions. Microsoft finally learned that most of us don’t like to sit there staring at the computer while software is being installed, so they did away with that particular imbecility. Ubuntu still has it.
I have yet to encounter a Linux installation that doesn’t pose severe penalties—you can’t play this kind of movie, hear this kind of audio file, work with this kind of document, all that. Networking to both Mac and Windows machines can still pose an exercise in massive frustration. Font handling remains stuck in the 1990s if not before.
So, beyond the occasional look-see, my geek genes stop cold before Linux. For an everyday computer user, the ordinary Joe who just wants to have a computer that works and runs the software that his friends expect him to have, it makes little to no sense. And I’m not poor enough, or geek enough, to be particularly interested otherwise.