
Things I've overheard about my Linux laptop while on public transportation - dpapathanasiou
http://www.arsgeek.com/2008/07/17/10-things-ive-overheard-about-my-linux-laptop-while-on-public-transportation/
======
ax0n
On a nice morning when I'd overslept a bit and couldn't make it to work on
time using only my bicycle (15 miles each way), I rode to the bus stop and
threw my bike in the rack on the front of the bus. Since I'd woken up late, I
didn't get to my usual email/news routine and I cracked the laptop open on the
bus, fired up my tether, and proceeded to check up on things. I'd noticed the
lady next to me was just gawking, like she'd never seen a laptop before. After
about five minutes of this, I asked her if I could help her with something.
The conversation went like this:

Her: "I just wonder why you aren't saving up for a car!"

Me: "Excuse me?"

Her: "Why did you buy a laptop if you can't even afford a car?"

Me: "I have a compact car and an SUV. I rode my bike here because I only live
two miles away and it's a beautiful morning!" (the truth is I hadn't driven my
car to get to work or to a bus stop in over a year, regardless of weather
conditions)

Her: "I see. So you got your license taken away?"

Me: _facepalm_

My laptop is a heavily-stickered 2nd-gen Black MacBook from late 2006. I've
also had a few transit riders ask me if I'm a "hacker." My typical response is
"Define hacker." They usually get it wrong.

~~~
MikeCapone
Sadly, this says a lot about the stigma of public transportation in certain
parts of the world (esp. in the US).

"Oh, so you're poor."

~~~
ax0n
I would agree with you, but she drove to the bus stop in a Lexus, like a lot
of folks out here. And she probably drove two miles or less to get there. I
live in the most affluent county in the region and "public transit" is in
place ONLY for the 8a-5p suburbanites commuting to downtown. A few buses in
the morning go downtown. A few in the evening come back out to suburbia. It's
worthless for anything other than getting to and from work for an average work
day.

~~~
MikeCapone
Good point. In my mind, I was picturing taking the bus in some random
relatively small city. But in certain places, public transit is mostly used by
the relatively rich people who live in the comfy suburbs.

------
defen
One time on an airplane I was doing some erlang programming. I had about 10
terminals and Textmate open. After about half an hour I get a tap on the
shoulder from the smoking-hot woman sitting behind and to the left of me. She
says, "Excuse me, but I find what you are doing to be utterly fascinating.
What is it?". I explain that I'm programming, and she asks if she can watch. I
said "sure", but I was so self-conscious that I couldn't get any real work
done after that. I just ended up flipping between Textmate and my terminals,
typing random commands. Sadly, I didn't get her number - we were both on a
connecting flight to different cities.

~~~
staunch
You should have told her you were an ASCII portrait artist, and that you'd
love her to model for you.

------
Pistos2
Sort of an inverse experience for me: Last year, I took my car into Mr. Lube
for the first time. The technician craned the monitor around for me to see the
items he was going to work on, and the cost breakdown, recommended maintenance
schedule, etc. I listened for a short while, but then my attention was fixated
on the fact that the screen was showing me Gnome, running on Ubuntu! You could
see the taskbar, the Gnome "start" button, and the window decorations. I asked
him if he were aware that they were running Linux here, not Windows. He raised
his palms and just said, "You would know more about that than I would, sir."

Now, for basic car maintenance, I only go to Mr. Lube. :)

Anyone know of any other businesses or establishments that use Linux for
customer-facing or POS machines? (I'm in Canada.)

------
motters
Whilst switching between workspaces with the compiz fusion cube effects
enabled I overheard someone say "That's one in the eye for Bill Gates right
there".

------
philjackson
A chap on the train once asked me if I was looking for work when he noticed my
Thinkpad had a GNU sticker on the lid.

~~~
MikeCapone
I'm not sure I get it. Is there something about GNU specifically that makes it
funny, or just in general that he would assume that Linux users are
unemployed?

~~~
philjackson
I suppose the sticker (which the FSF send to you when you sign a contributor
contract) implies a certain amount of technical knowledge.

~~~
MikeCapone
Thanks. It makes sense when read on the first level. I think I read it right
after some of the bike commuting comments above and was expecting something
funny, so I looked for something that wasn't there.

------
cookiecaper
One time, I took my laptop to a restaurant that my sister and I were meeting
some of her friends at because I was curious about the restaurant's WiFi
connectivity. My sister's friends in this story are film students. After
exchanging pleasantries, as they were all talking, I took out the laptop and
started kismet inside gnome-terminal.

My laptop happens to be a MacBook Pro, upon which I dual-booted OS X and
Fedora, but mostly used Fedora.

One of my sister's friends leaned over and beheld that I was using Linux on my
MBP -- they've tinkered with OSes a little bit so they know what Gnome looks
like -- and proceeded to freak out. I was bombarded with questions like "Why
would you use Linux when you have OS X?", "You could be using OS X right now!
I understand why you'd use Linux if you had a PC but you have OS X!", "OS X is
so much better and friendlier than Linux, and you can do so much more on it,
why are you using Linux?", "Sure, a _developer_ can use it, I guess, but why
would anyone else?", etc.

This discussion took over the night. All three of them now hate me because I
chose to use Linux instead of OS X.

~~~
MikeCapone
> All three of them now hate me because I chose to use Linux instead of OS X.

Seriously, or hyperbole?

~~~
cookiecaper
Seriously, for at least two of the three. I think the one thinks it's all a
little silly and doesn't care so much, but the others defriended me on
Facebook and tell our mutual friends that they still like them even though
they hang out with me too.

~~~
MikeCapone
Wow.

------
pavel_lishin
In response to #4, would have been a perfect time to bring up a Matrix
screensaver.

Or "cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'A-F0-9 '"

~~~
scdlbx
A little better: echo -e '\E[32;40m'; cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'A-F0-9'

~~~
graywh
Less magic: tput setaf 2; tput setab 0; cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'A-F0-9'

~~~
pavel_lishin
Can you explain what that does?

~~~
graywh
tput setaf 2 -- queries the terminfo database for the proper escape sequence
for setting the terminal foreground to color 2 (green) and echoes it, turning
your foreground that color tput setaf 0 -- ditto, but for black background

------
TallGuyShort
Last semester the guy sitting behind me asked, "Dude, are you a hacker or
something?"

~~~
r11t
The same thing happened to me a while back when I was bored in history class
and was solving some Project Euler problems in Ruby + Vim. The guys behind me
just bluntly asked me if I was a hacker and if I could get "into" the school
network ..whatever that was supposed to mean!

------
kilian
One of the most joyful things for me is see someone try working with my pc
(ubuntu, no panels, gnome-do and compiz). It often results in a fair number of
shrieks.

Before I had my macbook I had a lot of people, including mac users, assuming I
was running a hackintosh, despite the previously mentioned lack of panels.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Just curious: why no panels?

~~~
kilian
Compiz, guake, two screens and awn :) plenty of space and commands to see
everything and switch between them. I'm thinking of ditching awn.

Though to be honest, I do have a small dock with the notification area, it's
hidden most of the time.

------
notauser
I run Linux on my Mac laptop, which is always good for a few WTF moments when
someone takes a look at it.

~~~
ax0n
I dual-boot OS X and Windows 7 in bare metal on my MacBook. That gets me a few
serious "WTFs" as well. I also run several other OSes in VirtualBox, usually
full-screen. Karmic is one of them, but OpenBSD and Arch Linux are more
common.

------
sukuriant
Why do all those people think that the author is lying? Those are very
plausible, I'd even say likely!

------
barnaby
I ride MUNI to downtown San Francisco. Maybe I should open the laptop instead
of reading a book during my daily commute?

I'm by far not alone as an Ubuntu user around here, I wonder if I'd overhear
any comments at all?

~~~
4295
I'm sure as a unicycle rider you're overhearing plenty of comments already!

------
rick_2047
Strange things happen when you use linux, my sister is a CE student but didn't
care much about linux apart from the whole no virus threat thing. We have a
triple boot (ubuntu for her, arch for me and windows for work/guests/my gaming
needs). One day we got a different maintenance from our usual technician to
install a new UPS. He just looked at _my_ work in setting up the arch part,
_my_ work in making the grub boot screen preety, _my_ work at completely
changing ubuntu into something between mac and a kde desktop and _my_ work in
setting up arch to do maintenance cron jobs and got impressed. And you know
what he did?Gave _my_ sister a job offer to do some linux dev stuff for his
startup(I was not at home during all this btw). _My_ sister who cannot even
install things using synaptic and I dont even wanna go into how she sucks at
using gcc for her college work. And all this why?Because she has the _degree_
and I dont.

PS: She turned down the offer btw for her obvious incompetence.

