Microsoft and Best Buy Gang Up On Linux

The media and blogosphere are all in a tizzy over leaked screenshots allegedly showing that Microsoft is providing Best Buy with 'anti-Linux' training materials. You say 'anti-Linux', I say 'pro-Windows'. You say 'Linux bashing', I say 'marketing'.

What is the big deal? News flash: Microsoft sells Windows. Microsoft is not interested in promoting rival operating systems and it has a vested interest in providing training and marketing collateral to any retailer that will listen if it will help boost sales of its operating systems and software products.

The backlash against this 'indoctrination' of Best Buy 'Linux assassins', or using 'mis-education' to 'bribe' Best Buy employees all sounds like simple Microsoft-bashing to me. Were these same journalists as incredulous or self-righteous about the misleading claims Apple has propagated about Windows Vista or the UAC (user account control) feature?

Most of the reports about this Microsoft / Best Buy anti-Linux collusion seems to center around the veracity of the claims being made. Pro-Linux Anti-Microsoft users are quick to point out that you can run World of Warcraft on Linux...if you run it in WINE- a Windows emulator that runs on Linux. They also point out that there are chat clients, and webcam software, and printer drivers- you just have to know where to get them and how to install them.

To quote Shakespeare's Hamlet, "ay, there's the rub." See, these things are possible...for the technogeek crowd that loves Linux. Linux is getting easier and more mainstream as time goes on, but we're talking about Best Buy customers.

No offense intended to Best Buy customers, but they tend to buy a computer system like they buy a microwave or a dishwasher. They just want a computing 'appliance' to set on the desk and connect to the Internet. They don't want to know how it works or take it apart to modify it manually.

Marketing, by its very nature, tends to distort things in favor of the product being marketed. Yes, there are rules about truth in advertising, but that doesn't prevent hyperbole and exaggeration. There are no rules to stop a vendor from cherry-picking the stats and features that make its products look good while tacitly ignoring the ways the competition has it beat. That's just marketing.

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