JONTILLMAN.COM | part of the problem since 1976

Robin ‘Roblimo’ Miller of Slashdot fame takes on this myth over at NewsForge. He hits all the angles here, from Optimization as a hobby — or business to “You can” is not the same as “You should”. The closing in particular is just perfect:

To anyone who worries that if they switch to GNU/Linux they’re going to have to spend all their time messing with their system, I say, “If all you knew about cars came from watching NASCAR, you wouldn’t think about buying a car for everyday use.”

So don’t worry if it seems like half the Linux users in the world seem to have more in common with car performance freaks than with normal people. You don’t need to do all that to run Linux either at work or at home. For most of us, a stock distribution is fine, even if the tweakers sneer at us the same way someone who owns a tricked-out Lexus sneers at a perfectly sensible, one hundred percent stock Honda Civic.