The Heart of Linux
Tasks which are everyday simple to the experienced computer user can be daunting to someone who hasn’t been shown how.
Most everyone reading this, to at least some point, is computer proficient. Whether we’ve written scripts for macros to make our typing tasks simpler, or created entire websites, we perceive our skills as part of our daily lives. Not a big deal. It’s simply the tools we’ve accrued to facilitate our work. Ctrl+A? Nothin’ to it. Ctrl+V? Same same. Vi vs Emacs? Don’t start it. There are dozens of small, time-saving commands we’ve learned over the years. And we most certainly do take them for granted. But to those who don’t know much past turning the computer on and doing some basic browsing, those commands are like magic.
Ken Starks is the founder of the Helios Project and Reglue, which for 20 years provided refurbished older computers running Linux to disadvantaged school kids, as well as providing digital help for senior citizens, in the Austin, Texas area. He was a columnist for FOSS Force from 2013-2016, and remains part of our family. Follow him on Twitter: @Reglue
A helpful tip for those coming of age as a Linux Advocate: Temper your rhetoric when explaining just how much Microsoft sucks. It’s easy to come off as a wild-eyed zealot. These are lessons in advocacy learned rather quickly. And yeah…, that whole wide-eyed zealot thing? It didn’t work out so well for me. Nor will it for you.
Huh. He doesn’t know any poor people he says. Well “what a coincidence”, I told him. “Neither did I until I started looking for them.” That was the last I saw or heard from said person, and it’s all for the better. We didn’t seem to have much in common.
But this incident wasn’t to be pushed aside. The emails started coming in faster and faster, until I acknowledged that I had a real problem.
The problem is just One Little Thing…something so infinitesimal that it would be easy to gloss over and wave one’s hand in dismissal.
For a while they seemed to come almost in a measured release. They ranged from polite, insightful and informative, to a collateral-damage-be-damned raging and slashing diatribe. Some I would read; some I would not. No one takes a spitting, enraged person seriously unless they bear a weapon. Spitting, angry people tend to come forward with an obvious emotional outburst, most times presenting only the emotional aspect of what they have to say. Facts can be either few or “facts” from that writer’s point of view. Not a lot of us pay attention to someone presenting themselves in such a way. Maybe in a Donald-Trump-train-wreck sort of way, but as serious or meaningful presentations, that just doesn’t happen.