Linux has an image problem

Or rather the people who use it do. This picture was pasted in the #lugradio on freenode today. It’s a parody and extension of the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” Apple marketing campaign used heavily in the USA and now popularised in the UK with top comedy sell-outs Mitchell & Webb.

I’ll admit, it’s a funny photo. The PC (Windows) guy looks “normal”, he’s wearing a smart business suit, clean shoes and sporting an inoffensive haircut. The Mac guy is clearly more casual, more comfortable in a t-shirt & slacks,

The Linux guy is depicted as a Tron fan. Clearly a sci-fi geek, someone who doesn’t know how to fit in with society perhaps. Someone who when put next to a Windows or Mac user, looks out of place. It’s a clever picture whilst showing gross caricatures.

Is that how society sees us Linux users? Isn’t that how much of society sees geeks in general. The funny thing is that computers are now so pervasive in the western world that everyone has the opportunity to become a geek. Windows, Mac and Linux computers exist in businesses and homes all over the world, performing much the same tasks wherever they are.

We have always been those people you needed to fix your computer, but you didn’t want to be seen out in public with. For many years we geeks have been lower class citizens. Much like Ronnie Corbetts charcater in the Frost Report Sketch with John Cleese and Ronnie Barker, we “know our place”. (Edit: For those too young or too foreign to know, a YouTube link)

There is a change though. The people who use computers, the average Joe and Jane, are becoming more geeky. They are learning about technologies like USB2, protocols like HTTPS, and crazy acronyms like HDMI, PCMCIA and WPA-PSK. They are becoming more like the caricature they ridicule with every upgrade. They used to look down on us, maybe even feeling sorry for our obsessive ways, possibly even jealous of our encyclopaedic knowledge of TLAs, but it’s infectious, they’re turning into “us”.

So watch out Mac and PC, one day you might wake up and find yourself dressed as Ed Dillinger …

…and realise we were right all along.

Edit: Also available in French thanks to kNo`