If you don’t have a clue…

… just shut up. That is a German saying

Just some minutes ago I again had such an experience, where this saying totally fits. But let me start from the beginning.

I just had a look into one of my regulars’ channels, a channel that belongs to a website that is addressed to Linux beginners. I used to be moderator on that board and op in the channel, and for sentimental reasons, and because there are a bunch of nice people there, I still use to chat there.

But anyway – what lead me to resign my duties, was the fact that more and more stupid people where floating the channel with their stupidity and made me loose my fun in helping beginners, as it became more and more a unpleasant task, than having fun at leisure time.

But I am zoning out. So what happened today was that I and a person I know for some years now started our greeting as we use to with a little bit of funny flaming on our distributional choice.
Actually he was suggesting someone to (re- ?)install his SuSE to have a clean system. I was asking him how he could do that (as we both have serious doubts about the SuSE Distribution).

So that funny guy, that the suggestion was addressed to, started a flame war with me. How I could say something like this. My friend told him not to mind me, as I am a Gentoo user (he is Debian/Ubuntu user) – just joking as we always do.

But he goes on “Oh my god, how could one use Gentoo”, and “What was Gentoo again?”. Nice. Doesn’t know what he was talking about but trying to bash me?

Well, do it the quick and painless way – I just told him the well known facts, that speak against SuSE. His answers: “So what?” or “Anyway better than your stupid gentool!”.

Yeah, I should have stopped there. No I should have put him on ignore even before that. How stupid I was.

But best still comes. After talking about security issues, that you have when you run a computer that has lots of server-software installed by default (as SuSE does), that you neither use, nor maintain, he did the funniest step one could do: blaming me for not being able to read. Because if I could, I would have come across a newspaper, and therefor know that Linux does not have any security flaws, and also is totally uninteresting for hackers (or “hakers”, as he called them), because it is so secure.

Sometimes I don’t know, why I am dealing with such idiots?

Still, if you read this, and do not understand what exactly is funny about it, please, do me a favor – stay out of such discussions.

Firstly each software has security flaws, which sooner or later are discovered. Don’t believe me? Just read a bit here, or here. Or, as it is just a current issue, look here.
Secondly, hackers’ first choice of OS is are Linux/Unix style systems. At least if you understand the word hacker, as it should be understood. See here, or here (German text, quite funny), for example. That was somehow a wrong, broken version of the text, and I did not pay enough attention to realise it in first place. Here is the version I intended to link to: CCC Cologne – Wie-werde-ich-Hacker-HOWTO
Thirdly, each Distribution in the Linux world has it’s right to exist. But each of them has positive and negative aspects. If you deal with Linux, you should at least know them. And if it is only for the distribution you know. Stuff like “SuSE looks nice” or “SuSE installs so many nice tools” or “SuSE is used by everyone I know” are no, I repeat no arguments. If this is what you are thinking – stay out of such discussions. And if you still enter them – just know the difference between wise arguments, based on facts, and senseless personal insults. First one is okay, second one a no-go, if you don’t want to make a fool out of yourself.