I have some friends who just adore Kim Komando. Until I knew these guys I had never heard of Kim. These fellows are primarily Microsoft and Apple users which is Kim’s target audience. Plus, it does not hurt any that Kim is a relatively good looking blonde woman. If you are like me and know nothing about her then I invite you to check her site. Be aware that it is a site designed to target advertisements to the users and get one to buy stuff, including Kim’s “premium” content. The more users, the more potential advertisement revenue for Kim. Kim primarily targets the Microsoft user base to “help” with all the problems with Microsoft products which currently gives her a large base of potential readers (advertisement viewers), book buyers and premium content subscribers.
Since I am no longer fond of Microsoft products and have never been fond of Apple much I wondered how Kim handles questions about GNU/Linux a.k.a. Linux. Some searches on her site point to Linux questions that are only covered under her premium content. While I am curious how Kim answers these questions I am not curious enough to pay to find out. I also did some web searching with AltaVista and found that Kim has a regular column in the Gannett owned USA Today. Her last column there that had Linux in the title was in 2003. I read the column and discovered the typical “Linux is a command-line OS”, which it is not, and “GNU/Linux is only for tinkerers”, meaning geeks, information.
So, that was in 2003. Has Kim realized Linux is just a kernel and that GNU/Linux distributions are now good for the average desktop user? As of August 2008, apparently not. In a post on her web site about Inexpensive Laptops I found this little tidbit:
Netbooks generally are available with Windows. Some run Linux. Unless you want a learning experience, specify Windows. Also, software and hardware often won’t play nice with Linux. I only recommend Linux for hard-core geeks.
That sort of “Linux recommendation” is no recommendation at all. Any person reading that who is unsure about switching to a GNU/Linux distribution is more than likely going to be scared off by that “recommendation”.
Kim really gets it wrong with that statement. Hardware preloaded with GNU/Linux, like typical netbooks, is pretty much guaranteed to work with GNU/Linux. Software created on and for GNU/Linux will absolutely “play nice” with GNU/Linux. Unqualified statements by “experts”, such as the one from Kim above, do harm to adoption of Linux by average users. Actually recommending trying a GNU/Linux distribution on a Live CD would be a better recommendation. But one cannot expect those who make their living off the woes of Microsoft slaves to promote a more secure, more robust and more user friendly solution like GNU/Linux.
There are more “experts” like Kim out there on the WWW that make their living off of Microsoft created problems. For the most part they all denigrate adoption of GNU/Linux by average desktop PC users. After all, these “experts” are invested in Microsoft as their cash cow and do not want to kill that beast. I understand their motivation to keep people on Microsoft products even though I find this motivation repugnant. GNU/Linux is definitely ready to be used by average users buying preloaded desktop systems. The typical Microsoft “expert” is just not ready for GNU/Linux it seems.
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Edit Wed May 13 15:18:11 CDT 2009: Fix a poorly created sentence in the next to last paragraph.
Edit Wed May 13 15:57:40 CDT 2009: Fix misspelling of Gannett.
Captain_Tux (comment #27), thank you for the kudos and for reading.
I think one can easily sell preloaded GNU/Linux computers. After all, my company does offer those on our shopping site.
But one must be willing to help people convert if one does sell such systems. Giving away some free support to help a customer get converted to GNU/Linux is a way to “pay” for being able to offer it for “free” as a preload. If one does not want to give away support for “free” for eternity, that is understandable. Just give 30, 60, 90 days of “free” support to help with the changeover with the understanding that after 30, 60, 90 days support will not be “free”.
I believe “kb” just needs to rethink how he does this.
Testing reCAPTCHA for unregistered users following update to latest version.
(It works. Gene)
If someone is looking for an alternative to Kim Komando that fears no penguin, I suggest Leo Laporte. He’s on KFI 640KHz AM in the Los Angeles market, and online everywhere else. He’s also involved in a long-running podcast called This Week In Tech, which is basically a running family reunion of the late lamented TechTV and their much-beloved The ScreenSavers show.
Here’s the URL to check Leo and his friends out: http://www.twit.tv/
Ms. Geek (comment #33), thank you for reading and for the pointer to Leo Laporte. I know I have heard/read Mr. Laporte’s name in regard to GNU/Linux somewhere before but cannot recall where.