You Can't Coach That

Saturday, April 14, 2007

From Wikipedia:

Fanboy or Fanboi is a term used to describe an individual (usually male, though the feminine version fangirl may be used for females) who is utterly devoted to a single fannish subject, or to a single point of view within that subject, often to the point where it is considered an obsession. Fanboys remain loyal to their particular obsession, disregarding any factors that differ from their point of view. Fanboys are also stereotypically aggressive and hateful towards the opposing brand or competition of their obsession regardless of its merits or achievements.

I really become quite amused when I come across examples of fanboys in the wild. The obsession can be anything, Linux, Apple Macs, Windows are the ones I see on line most of all but the list can be extended to off line areas as well. Makes of car I suppose could be an example.  Here is the latest example which amused me, found in comments to an article on the top 10 Linux distributions:

Microsoft’s borrowed operating system is extended after embracing any succesful (sic) project, be it active X or mysql and released by a criminal monoply (sic) . It comes with a minimal set of applications (a calculator, a few games, some networking tools, an Internet browser.. etc). Software can be obtained by users from various sources and installed on the operating system ,Usually without any interaction or knowledge of the unsuspecting user.

What is most amusing in this example is that the original article had nothing to do with Windows whatsoever. There hadn’t even been any Windows related comments to the article before this one. I could understand perhaps such a comment if the story was comparing Linux to Windows and there are plenty of those if you look for them (On second thoughts, no I couldn’t - criminal monopoly!? Please!). No, this was Linux compared to itself in its many flavours. It is also worth noting that while the article is not trying to say one distribution is better than another but rather that which one is best depends on what you need, there was still plenty of debate (to use the term loosely) about which is the best.

[Source: Overview of the 10 major linux distributions]

“You can’t coach that”

Afterthought - I use both Windows and Linux depending on what I am doing and would relish the chance to try Mac but funds do not permit.