As everyone must have read, recently Linus Torvalds posted a message in a mailing list (GNOME Usability), saying that the GNOME desktop environment had a mentality of "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality", so he "personally just encourages people to switch to KDE".

Before I start, let me just say that I have nothing against Linus, and far from that I greatly respect him as the brilliant engineer I think he is.  Neither do I have anything against KDE, which I think is another excellent alternative for a Free desktop.

But as a proud GNOME user, and a proud member of the GNOME Marketing Team, I beg to disagree with his claims.  Although some of his observations sound valid (and I hope they will be implemented in future versions), I think he's missing the point completely.

First of all, I don't think GNOME is only targeted at absolute begginers (whom Linus implicitly calls "idiots"), but to everyone who wants a usable, clean looking, and (most of all) simple desktop.  I have to admit that sometimes you just can't please everyone, but yet I think we're getting a little closer to that with every new release.

But of course, that's just my opinion.  Luckily, there are also some strong facts that support my point: if GNOME was only for "idiots", I doubt it'd be the default desktop for today's most popular distro (Ubuntu), or for one of the best selling enterprise distros in the whole world (Red Hat).  Are all those users just "idiots"?  I doubt so...

My second point questions the very logic of Linus' reasoning.  He implies that absolute begginers are "idiots", automatically linking intellectual capacity to computer skills... a link that has yet to be proven (or so says science).

No matter what Linus think, there is no reason to assume that people with little computer skills must be dumb: many of them are doctors, artists, scientists, or intellectuals, amongst other professions that could hardly be mastered by "idiots"... they just don't care much about computers, just like Linus must not care much about some of those areas of expertise.

I know that sometimes we have the (bad) habit of correlating intelligence with "knowledge within a particular field": intellectuals say people who don't know Camus are stupid, basketball fans say people who don't know Michael Jordan are stupid... and Linus says computer begginers are stupid.  But the fact that an idea is somewhat common doesn't make it any less wrong.

So, to sum it up: is GNOME a desktop for absolute begginers?  Yes, and we're very proud of that.  Is it ONLY for absolute begginers?  Not at all, and we're very proud of that aswell.  And are absolute begginers "idiots"?  No of course they're not, and we better stop treating them like that, if we really want Free / Open Source software to reach mainstream status.



Santiago Roza
GNOME Marketing Team
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