Apple recently released an upgrade to OS X, version 10.5 ("Leopard") to much acclaim. It certainly appears to have some excellent new features, in particular the Time Machine capability that gives you a version control-eque view of your file system, allowing you to see what your system looked like at any previous point in time. As with any major upgrade, there have been a wide variety of reported problems, particularly the "Blue Screen of Death" upgrade issue where the machine refuses to restart until manually rebooted. Whether these problems are more or less than a typical upgrade is for others to decide, but it got me thinking about what happens when I upgrade to a new version of Linux, or try out really any new piece of open-source software: what my expectations are for how smoothly it will go, and what the outcome will be.

To put it bluntly, as a long-time user of Linux on the desktop, I have lost any concept of technical support. I never have a phone number, email address, or in some cases, even a forum to which I can go complain or get assistance with my problems. When I install the latest version of Fedora, or a new version of the kernel, or get a new video driver, I can expect a wireless card not to work, or the system to hang on boot, or my laptop to fail to suspend and resume properly, or worse. While Linux has made huge strides from the early days of endless handholding to even bring up a graphical environment, a few glitches are still par for the course. This isn't a complaint at all; to me, the process of fixing these things is half the fun. I have argued before that users have developed a kind of learned helplessness from Windows (and Mac) hiding information from them, and needing to learn something to get my system fully functional is a great opportunity to acquire new skills.

With Linux, it's not just that there isn't a help line or a dedicated user support forum (and certainly there are many places to get help; learning how to research a technical question is a valuable skill in-and-of itself), it's that there isn't a company that you can ultimately force to do anything about your problem. If my laptop isn't booting, my choices are to try to fix it myself, try to get a more knowledgeable person interested (which usually works!), or give up and switch to something else. I am owed nothing by the Linux community in the way that Microsoft owes me a working machine because I dropped some amount of $ on the license.

I think that notion is what scares most people, and businesses, off of Linux. The arguments that it doesn't run needed applications, or doesn't have the driver support, or is not user-friendly are all slowly eroding, but I think there is still a deep-rooted psychological fear of removing that safety net. Some companies, like Red Hat or Novell, have stepped into that void with support contracts aimed at businesses, but I look at friends and family who all are very smart and capable people, but still pay the "Microsoft tax", and I can understand not wanting to have to give up that feeling of having someone to complain to, or at least blame when something goes wrong. When I take a cross-country car trip, I have a gnawing fear that something strange is going to go wrong and I will be stuck in another state with an inoperable vehicle, and no way to judge the validity of what a mechanic is telling me, nor any faith that their solutions will be the right ones. So I compensate in the same way as people in the computer world: I buy a comprehensive warranty package that makes sure that I can always have my car towed to a dealer who will pick up the tab for the vast majority of problems.

As a "computer mechanic", I feel sorry for computer users who have so little knowledge of what goes on in their system and who are beholden to a faceless software company, in the way that car mechanics probably feel a little sorry for me, but I can still understanding it. For developers though, I have more trouble accepting it.. The large upside of living without technical support is that it has given me a level of confidence that I will be able to resolve any problem, and this has spilled over into my work as a developer on a variety of projects. This benefit is yet another reason that I encourage young software engineers to begin using and learning an "unsupported" system like Linux as early in their training as they can. The sooner you start living without technical support, the better you will be able to effectively tackle the problems you encounter in your professional career.