 Hi! I'm Mike Chang. Before we begin, let's start with a look at the world in this difficult time, in the hope that we can stay together, stay socially distant, and work on ending racism once and for all. Now to set the premise, you've just been hired with fabulous amounts of money. You're even getting a free high-end laptop for your work. You feel great, until you see the rules about Linux. And then you're a little sad. It's like your new company doesn't support Linux. What can you do about that? Thus the title of my talk, when Linux on the desktop is a second-class citizen, and how you can make things better. If you want to copy the slides, here's the URL for you. If you miss it, keep watching. You'll see it periodically at the bottom of many of the slides. Time to talk about myself. I'm a documentarian, also known as a tech writer, for a company called GitLab. A single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle. Sales pitch. But before becoming a tech writer, I wrote a few books, one for the Red Hat Certified Engineer Exam, and then also something called Linux Annoiances for Geeks. I've been using Linux since 1999. My first distro was Red Hat 5.1. Just before Anaconda became a thing. If we were physically together in a room, I'd call out each of these job functions. I'd ask you to stand up. But as you're probably sitting at a terminal, let me just suggest that you stretch. If there's one thing for sure, Linux users are everywhere, and we're all geeks and proud of it. And in tech, being a Linux geek gives us empathy for our users. At least in the enterprise, most deployments today are on Linux. At this point in my talk, I could go in two different directions. Linux for all or Linux for geeks. There are arguments for and against both. If I were to push Linux for all, I'd have to list lesses and minuses. Yes, you wouldn't have to buy an office suite. You could look for open source options of specialized tools. But there would be fear, which you'd try to alleviate with training. Nevertheless, you risk complaints before you get to those huge potential rewards. In contrast, there's Linux for geeks. By definition, people who self-select Linux have advanced skills. They need minimal support, and they require little training. They have a high comfort level with the operating system, and they're focused on the rewards, specifically increased productivity by using the operating system they work with best. As much as I'd like Linux to rule the desktop, that's not realistic. Linux is made for people with advanced skills. Sure, anyone can handle Linux if given enough time, but that's not realistic. People who've learned Linux have, more likely than not, learned it through the community. They have expertise, and they know how to support each other. Every year, since maybe 2004, people have been saying, it's the year of the Linux desktop. I know people are still pushing the idea, with story of their non-techie relatives. I believed it for years. It hasn't happened, and I'm not sure it'll ever happen. I mean, early in June, I ran into this error message. My first thought was, well, where's that USB stick with the later version of Linux that I have in reserve? And then I thought, gosh, if I had installed Linux for friends, and they ran into this problem, would they still be friends? Fact of life, as Linux users, we tinker. Not everyone can handle these kinds of error messages, but we expect them. But these kinds of errors create fear. But you might say, what of the blue screen of death? Yes, it's awful. The message is so awful that Microsoft changed it all the way back in 2009. Yes, the blue screen of death still exists, but it's almost user-friendly. It even has a message for the geeks among us who want to know more. In small print, but you can see it. In contrast, we still have kernel panics, with error messages that look almost as bad as the blue screen of death. And pity the poor accountant who reads through the entire message, only to see the word panic at the end. I'm not sure I'd want to imagine how that account would react. So the choice here is straightforward. It's easier to advocate for Linux for geeks. Pardon me. Now, remember, we want to help people think more highly about Linux. So how do we advocate for Linux? How do we make Linux more mainstream in the corporate world? To that end, I think we'd have to address six issues. I'll go through them one by one, and this will make up the bulk of my talk. Let's start with fear. With exceptions, when you present Linux to management, you're presenting something that's unfamiliar. The penguin might seem less than serious, but then someone remembers, Linux can be difficult. Then he might see this kind of reaction from management. Yep, Edward munches the screen. But why would people fear Linux? Seriously, in any world where someone might say, rebuild the kernel? Well, that can be too technical, even for a good portion of Linux geeks. It's free. Well, there's a Portland furniture guy who used to say free is a very good price. It is. But when you say it's free, it makes people think you get what you pay for. And if something is free, it's not supported. Let's go through the first fear that is too technical, even for your geeks. Yes, rebuilding the kernel may be too much of a challenge. And yes, there can be hardware issues. What do you do about drivers? When people create you hardware, they don't always create drivers for Linux. What's the response to that? Well, the Ubuntu is ambitious with their responses. They want a Linux that's accessible to all. So they've created something called the Ubuntu Software Center, a GUI that simplifies the effort of software management. Red Hat has something similar. The Red Hat Software Center. In a similar vein, excellent companies have created systems, hardware systems, laptops, desktops, and workstations that are certified with Linux out of the box. Next fear. Fear of free software. I've been seriously in popular culture. You'd think if it's free, there must be a catch. Some of you may recognize this man, this old friend of Linux. Steve Bommer was chairman of Microsoft in the first part of the century. I think some of this reaction to Linux were based on fear, as Windows was a bigger part of the Microsoft revenue stream at the time. So how do you answer these fears? Seriously, the license of the operating system doesn't affect us, those of us who create software on a GPL operating system, even though it's viral. We can license it any way we want. In other words, the operating system license does not matter. The next question is support. But seriously, what company purchases support for any operating system today? Yes, I'm ignoring small companies without a budget to hire IT. Thus, there are use cases to buy support. But anyone who has problems, even with Microsoft Windows and back OS systems today, relies, at first, on the community. In other words, they'll take a search engine and look for their answer. And companies without IT budgets, that works for them. But that also works for bigger companies. Google supports Linux. IBM supports Linux and they even purchase Red Hat, Amazon, even Microsoft. The list goes on and on. Nevertheless, you still need to choose hardware with care. If a laptop vendor offers Linux pre-installed with support, you know that they've certified at least their laptop hardware. And Linux users, admins and developers everywhere, they understand the power of community in making things work. It's actually the power of a corporate supported community, given the response. Next issue is choice. And that has to be split into two parts. Operating systems and hardware. In the tech environment, you typically have three choices. Windows, Mac and Linux. And within those choices, you have dozens of options. With Linux, you have dozens of different distributions. And making the choice may make you feel like you're in a grocery store with all these options for drinks when all you need is to quench your thirst. You can narrow down these choices somewhat. In the landscape of Linux operating systems, there are three major players. Red Hat, Ubuntu, and Debian. And with apologies to other distributions, I'm being a bit arbitrary with all that. But nevertheless, even with these three choices, it may seem like anarchy. But these distributions have more in common than most people think. They're all based on the same kernel. They all use the same kind of software, maybe with different icons. But it's the same thing functionally. So seriously, Linux distributions are more like different flavors of jam or preserves. They include many of the same open source components, shells like bash, services like cups, firewalls with IP tables. The knowledge that Linux users share in common is more powerful than the special features in specific distributions. This is for hardware. In general, it's a binary choice. Apple versus the wind-tail options. How do most companies respond to that? Some may say, hey, thou shalt use Apple hardware honors as an employee. Some may say, Windows only. But fortunately, Linux is flexible. Both work as hardware for Linux. And when you do the math, when you do the research, Linux can get you better hardware at a lower cost. But if you're advocating for Linux, you really do need to do the research. Take a typical system. Take the specs that are used at your company. And use those specs to calculate costs of buying new. Make a comparison. As you can see here, the difference may not be so great between Linux, Windows, and Mac, but the cost advantage accelerates when you count the cost of office suites and other specialized software. And in the Linux community, people have been collecting data on hardware and entire systems that work with Linux for years. I mean, literally, there's a list of hundreds of laptops that work with Linux. And that's not static. I mean, just last month, I saw these headlines. I mean, seriously, Lenovo is going to support Linux on all their systems. Wonderful. Dell markets to us as Linux users. Dell.com slash Linux. How easy can you get? Next bit, policy. Policies can be complex, long and hard to read. They're written by lawyers after all. In the meantime, IT departments are overworked and understaffed. Put the two together and you have IT departments reacting in this way. But in many places, especially in tech, if you're into Linux, the people in the IT crowd, they can be your friends. In many cases, they also run Linux at home. And they recognize that you're the kind of worker US Linux geek who will almost never bother them. And generally when you do, it'll be with an interesting problem. At one time, IT was filled with people who did only Microsoft. The MCSE was king. But look at the data today. Job postings by certification. You look at the numbers and then you realize over half the job postings are directly Linux related. It's no wonder that Microsoft has recently retired a whole bunch of Microsoft certifications. So if you're using Linux, people in IT, at least if they care about their own job security, they want to be your friend. And while we're speaking about policies, it's a good time for me to reference the policy of my employer, GitLab. We authorize Apple and Linux systems for our employees. The only condition if you want to use the Linux system is that you're able to support yourself. And speaking of support, if you want to buy support, you have your standard options of Apple, Microsoft and Linux, but buying support can be a chore. You have to figure out, oh my gosh, I'm going to have to get a quote from Microsoft and that's going to cost me a bundle. Look at that price for that Apple support contract. And Linux has options courtesy of Red Hat and Ubuntu. But let's back up a second. If your target is the Linux geek, do you really need that support? Some people say you do. Google supports Linux internally for their employees. They take the latest Debian release, not Debian stable. Debian unstable. They build it up a bit. They lay it out in a pixie image. And I have a link to the white paper in this slide. They store software in central repositories. And they let you install the software available from those repositories using apt, a command line tool. So they expect at least that level of geekiness. Next, customer focus. Fact of life, many of us are moving to the cloud. If we create software, it's typically mostly for people who deploy on the cloud. And based on this pie chart, 93% of deployments use some form of Linux. 6% on Microsoft Windows. Almost nothing on Mac. So if you want to empathize with your customers, you want to be able to walk in their shoes. If 93% are deploying on some form of Linux, don't you want your people to use Linux? Isn't that the way to get more helpful products? Next, community. If you want Linux users to practice self support, you're going to need to let them organize in a community. So how do you manage a community? Fortunately, it's a common cause. Everyone in your office, in your company who uses Linux, they want to be able to use it productively for their jobs. The premise of being a Linux geek is that you're a knowledgeable user. You're not intimidated by community and you know that you need to do your homework before asking a question. But if you do your homework and show a willingness to help, i.e. building up karma points, others become willing to help you. But with this kind of community, or any kind of community seriously, it's important to have a code of conduct. Linux users, like lots of other people, are passionate about what we do. So what are the lessons of all of this? I have six points with respect to advocating for Linux. What are the answers? From fear, we could say, hey, Linux has corporate backing. From choice, and the anarchy of choice, we could say, hey, all these Linux distributions have lots of things in common. So if your users choose many different distributions, they can still help each other. Policy. IT can be your friend in getting around policy or getting through supporting Linux while complying with policy, as they too want to learn Linux and want to be able to say, hey, we support Linux on their resumes. While support is expensive, if you focus on the Linux geek in the corporate environment, you can say, hey, we rely on self-service, and you can tell people, don't most of your users rely on self-service anyway? Fact of life. Customer focus. Since most customers in the software space deploy on Linux, your developers and so on who use Linux are more likely to have empathy for your customers. And to create a community, you know that your Linux users have a common cause. But if you need to advocate for Linux in your company, you need an elevator pitch. For that, I'd keep two things in mind, cost and customer empathy. For cost, you want to do the work of calculating the cost advantage of Linux over back and windows, not only in hardware, but also in software. For customer focus, you'll want to have statistics at hand to be able to say, hey, our customers deploy on the cloud and 93% of them use Linux. Don't you want employees who can get into their heads to help help them to empathize with them to help create better products? And with those things in mind, I can say thank you and also say thanks to my employer with the help of my dog. Her name is Katie. She's a lab. And if this video starts, you'll watch her get the ball and putting that together. I thank my employer, GitLab for giving me the time and space to create this presentation for you. And with that, here's another view of the URL for my slides. And let me say thank you very much. And we'll end the recording. And once this goes live, I'll be here to listen to and hopefully answer some of your questions. Thank you. Ah, can people hear me? I guess I was on mute. Sorry about that. Let's see here. I'm just going through the questions one by one. Ah, first question. Somebody's asking me when one by RTE eight book is coming out and that's that's still do we determine there been believe it or not COVID related delays. So I can't I can't give you a definite date at the moment. The next question is Linux will dominate on the desktop. It is called Chrome OS on Chromebooks and Chrome based now in K K-12 schools, next universities, then corporations, Google Docs is always already being adopted by some major companies. The PC is too complex for most users. Your thoughts. Well, that reminds me of what the Ubuntu founder, Mark Shelworth, he had bug number one, Windows dominates on the desktop. He closed that bug several years ago with the advent of of Android and the relative dominance thereof. So yes, their Linux has made progress. The question is whether it'll become the dominant sort of operating system on people's desktops or will the desktop become irrelevant. I don't have a good answer for that because I'm not a market strategist. Next question. I was curious if you have any any experience with fedora silver blue and the concept of a immutable operating system. I haven't tried fedora silver blue, but I love the idea of operating systems that are well I've been essentially essentially read only situations and that's a good way to promote security to have things set up on and this gets more indecisive than any sort of Linux on the desktop. But if you have something that's immutable that's read only, you know when you can rely on what's happening with the operating system. Next question. Do you think that Linux on the desktop could be the main operating system in the next 10 years? Well, I think that goes back to the previous question about Linux penetrating via education and that's an open question. Maybe, but my personal opinion is that it would need support by a major corporation, somebody who would actually market Linux and say Linux is the future, it's new and improved and all those marketing things that help the operating systems or any other product penetrate the consumer space. Next question. When we did this at Epic, I presume that's the name of a company a decade ago, pardon me, it was quote-unquote opt-in but it was a little more complicated than Linux for Geeks. I guess that's just a comment and I recognize that the way that people adopt Linux in the corporate world can vary widely. Next question. I want to know about the technical writer as your job too. That's a long discussion and I think we should take that to the 2-track wildcard roma on Slack. Gosh, I keep getting questions. Comment. The silver blue and flat pack experience will be a big win with IT departments since IT loves control. I don't have a good comment on that except to say that then I know IT keeps looking at Linux systems as endpoints that they want to control and I don't know if there's a relationship between flat packet and such endpoint control and I guess that's it for the questions and except for the question that I set aside on technical writing. If you're interested in discussing this more, I will hang out in the 2-track wildcard Slack room for a while and with that I guess I'm looking for help from support to see how to shut this down. But before that, let me say thank you very much for your time and listening to my talk.