Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
As you may know, I worked for an OEM, we supplied machines to large entities as well, like governments, and I had to deal with government officials regarding computers for schools, etc. A favourite tactic of theirs is to take the cheaper machines with Linux and renege on the agreement as soon as payment is due, regardless of the contract, insisting they wanted Windows as we are pawning off SUB-STANDARD!!! goods on them in the form of Linux. (You have to remember these people are showered with junk from Microshaft, lanyards, flash drives, mugs, etc, that Linux does not give.)
This kind of thing carried over to large companies I used to work for, donating all their old workstations to schools, with SkoleLinux (or PCLinuxOS) loaded for the schools, by yours truly, and set up with all the necessary accounts and software before shipping it to them (this is a lot of labour). Usually within a week, those machines have pirated copies of Windoze on them, the ‘excuse’ being that the kids need to learn to use what they would use in a ‘real’ business.
Again, shipping shipping-container-classrooms, filled with Linux laptops (OLPC clones) to various African countries, to find that within a week or so you cannot do remote administration any more. You find they have been loaded with Windows, no matter that it is now useless, basically turtles stampeding through peanut butter, it is perceived you are dumping some operating system to keep the kids back, instead of it being the other way around. Because THEY (the receivers) now loaded say Windows 7 with Office 2010 on a machine with 512MB of memory and tiny flash drive, made for Linux, NOT Windoze, you are now the big bad, labelled as dumping junk on Africa.
There is a perception that Linux is inferior because it does not work with X, Y or Z, by your average stiff. Though the Linux kernel probably runs more devices than any other OS, opinions are ‘me’ centric, as users do not care; they want to walk into their local Walmart (just an example), pick up the cheapest, crappiest printer (insert peripheral here), without looking at the compatibility, go home and it must work. Here Microshaft with its bottomless wallet rules the roost, paying manufacturers to get that Works with Windows logo on their goods and getting drivers. Once they have gained the monopoly, they have now changed it around where the manufacturers have to pay Microshaft to be certified. However, the rabbit hole is deeper.
Now for the unpopular opinion.
Now don’t get me wrong, these people on the receiving end will pose for photos and smile big smiles, etc, as long as stuff is free, and badmouth you as soon as you leave. I used to see it all the time as I used to do project management for the logistics for well meaning European organizations. I found that some places just keep on giving, regardless; example: ABET Centres (Adult Based Education & Training). The computers are stolen the night after delivery, and more are sent, and this process just repeats until the computers are found on trash heaps as the stolen market is saturated. (This does not stop them from being stolen, weirdly, or the donors to stop sending.) Because things are handouts, and nobody works for them, there is no incentive to look after them. I understand charity, but I think there should be some sort of exchange (It does not have to be money), to give the Linux PCs donated by well meaning souls, a value. So here is my opinion, Linux is perceived to have no value, and Windows as valuable, because all these “free” PCs come with it. (Now my opinion is based on projects in Africa, from Uganda to Angola and many places in-between, I cannot comment on other places in Asia, etc).
My reason for saying this is that during one of Mark Shuttleworth’s Linux Days (remember the freedom toasters?), we handed out free CDs, to find 80% of them in the trash at the shopping centre we were at. The next day we “sold” them for a 50c donation and suddenly there were none in the trash. They now had a “value”, little as it was – it was “valuable”.
Am I too harsh? Am I looking at it the wrong way? It’s only an opinion after all.