False strawberry

There is an apocryphal study, somewhere out there in the world, that examines people’s perception of food flavourings. When it comes to strawberry flavour, the vast majority of people choose the artificial flavour over the natural flavour, because it’s the only flavour they know.

I raise this rather obtuse point because of what someone said at Linux Users Group meeting last night: “People think that Linux is difficult to configure, that Macs are easy, and that Windows is what most of us know.”

Wake up everyone, smell the fresh-brewed caffeinated coffee! I now find that Ubuntu Linux finds my disparate hardware and peripherals far more comprehensively than Windows. And that includes wireless cards, printers and mobile phones.

The other myth is that customer support is better for proprietary software. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve emailed for support for Free Software just as much as I ever did for proprietary software (specifically the JEvents and RSForms plugins for the Joomla! Content Management System). And the Ubuntu forums are absolutely rife with answers, so many that I have yet to post a question.

Maybe once people get a taste for natural Free Software they’ll wean themselves off that artificial proprietary stuff ;)