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Lawyer's Funny AntiLinux FUD Turns Out to be Not So Funny

By Pamela Jones et al.

I put this article from Law.com's Legal Technology page, "Commentary: The Penguin Doesn't Fly, Avoid Linux" in News Picks because I found it hilarious, in the Rob Enderle kind of way. But then I thought I'd look up the author on Google, and lo and behold, I find he said something that appears to be not exactly true. I'm not talking about the FUD stuff. I'm talking about his assertion that he couldn't get any answers to a request for help from Mandriva Forum:

And, Linux proponents claim that if there is any kind of problem, or a viral threat or other OS disaster, there is an army of Linux programmers standing by to remedy the situation.

But these claims do not reflect my experience. I tried to install Puppy Linux without success -- and my e-mails to the developers were ignored. Ark Linux developers could not explain why my computer's Wi-Fi card didn't work. The Ubuntu forum could not explain why a DVD player would not eject. The Mandriva support site did not respond to queries at all. And it took a tech support person from Wine, a program supposed to allow Windows applications to run on Linux computers, 6 days to finally respond to my requests for help; which he was unable to resolve.

I know. I love that touch about a viral threat in Linux. Hilarious. But look what I just found: two pages of responses to a request for help from someone with his name. If it's the same individual, it's not so funny now.

Full post as published by Groklaw on August 09, 2008 (boomark / email).