My GNU/Linux Persuasive Essay

When I wrote this, it was late last night, because I just remembered it and started and kept at it for over an hour non-stop, thinking of what to add, yet not making it TOO long with too much information. I suppose it's supposed to be a persuasive, and nor informative essay, but I tried to bring up facts *And opinions* on short-notice *Without looking at any documentation for validation of my "Facts", so this is the knowledge accumulated from the few months of me using Linux* and opinions of my own to help "Persuade" the reader *My English teacher*. Some may be false information, or there may not be enough information regarding the subject, but is there anything you guys would like to add?

I'm in College myself, and have limited interest in other people's home work.

This post defeats the purpose of the essay. You were given that task to assess some qualities they are trying to teach you. It should be a snapshot of your abilities, not our experience.

2 things really jump out at me-

"1. If you're a hardcore gamer"

People spend 'up to $1000 on a gaming rig? Add a thousand or 2 there. Some video cards go for $700-1000 (AMD6990, GTX590).

Nobody with 1/2 an idea would be buying a MacPro for gaming. The best video card you can get (AFAIK) from apple now is a 5870. I dont know how many mac fans know that you are meant to be able to run any normal PCIe....well, with windows installed anyway. There was some serious 'cant run OSX' issues when people tried to use standard PCIe video cards in macs in the past.

"3. No Viruses nor Spyware to date".

Sorry, thats just out and out wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_malware

As for point #6, I wouldnt be encouraging any new users to get gnome 2.X now. I also wouldnt call gnome 3, unity or any of the *box WMs 'unique'.

BTW, your screenshot is interesting. An almost 'girlie' desktop background, with Sodom playing in banshee.

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Then I apologize. *Hangs head in shame*

Fixed the #3. but I'll fix 6 so that it'll be less biased toward GNOME2.x

Thank you for contributing.

Who are you trying to persuade? It comes across as very very chatty - your comments surrounded by asterisks are distracting - and you don't explain everything: the word "distro" can be confusing to someone who doesn't know about distributions.

Decent first draft to get your ideas down, but needs more work. Have a look at Linux is NOT Windows to see how this could be laid out.

I'll look at it, but I've added a brief explanation of a distribution. Also, it's not supposed to be college rate work, just basic level high school essays. Not worth many points either. Still, I'll try to improve it along the way.

You used the phrase "hardcore gamer" in an academic essay?

It's meant to persuade the reader. The reader could either be completely clueless to references to other teachers at my school, or it could even be my teacher. Anyone who reads it could be a "Hardcore Gamer", even a teacher can be one, so why not?

Edit: I think I know what you mean, that I'm being a bit too casual, but I don't know what other way to put it. I could change it to "Passionate Gamer"

Personally, I would probably use "someone who plays a lot of computer games", just to be on the safe side and avoid too much "jargon".

I would tend to agree that it does seem kind of chatty/casual overall…and I think some of the statements are overexaggerations, e.g. "If you have a 5 to 10 year old machine, install DamnSmallLinux on it and it’ll work like it was brand new.". You do know DSL is no longer actively maintained, right? Personally, I wouldn't make such recommendations. If anything, I would recommend a more up-to-date lightweight distro, such as Puppy or SlitaZ.

Also, I would try to avoid the use of emoticons in what is supposed to be an academic paper, e.g. in your third "against Linux" point, you used ">:(", and that point overall seems like it's showing a bit of attitude actually ("the Linux community doesn’t need you anyway").

I hope I'm not seeming offensive here; I'm just trying to provide some constructive criticism that will hopefully help you out.

Thank you for the constructive criticism, I'll make sure in the future, if I ever do an essay, I'll be more straight-forward. I replaced DSL with Lubuntu since it should be able to play it anyway and since it's still Ubuntu, it's still user-friendly.

I noticed a tense error in section five, your discussion of package managers. "you can install any package you wanted" Fix as you wish

Also when you mention Apple bypassing copy left, they originally used BSD licensed code(see Apple Darwin) rather than GPL, which iirc allows people to use code without sharing. Just wanted to point that out.

Mentioning piratebay, may put a slight negative stigma. I mean my mom thought I was doing something illegal while I was setting up Arch Linux. Telling them they can get linux from the media's beating horse, could be a bad idea.

Otherwise, I like it

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I made a few changes to exclude "ThePirateBay" and fixed that typo, and I'll keep what you said about BSD License in mind, thank you for contributing.

You could also try mentioning unetbootin or Linux Live Usb Installer (Lili) (both of which will download/burn ISO images to usb)

My personal opinion: If you want to do an persuasive essay, build it up on facts. It brings next to nothing to try to persuade people with propositions that are simply wrong and can be simply falsified.

Some things I found that are wrong (I think, please correct me if I am incorrect):
1. As stated before, buying a Mac for gaming isn't the best thing, but it works. But why do I have to add the costs of downloading games from Steam if I buy a Mac. Are Steam games freely available for Windows? I doubt.

2. Really, "greedy bastards" in a persuasive essay?

3. I am biased against the term "user-friendly". You can see here why.

4. Since when has a distribution has to integrate a GUI in their repositories to count as a distribution?

5. Where can I find that repository that stores all of the software for GNU/Linux?

6.Plain wrong. I can make any change I want to a GPL licensed code, and doesn't have to share anything, as long as I use it for my self and are not distributing it. I only have to share the new code if I want to distribute the app together with the changes.

7. Again, "cheating bastards" in an essay. And then, insulting others, just because you are totally misinformed? As stated above, Mac OS X is based on BSD, and the BSD license allows the developers to make derived work closed source.

8. This sentence makes not any sense to me at all. Besides that Wine is not an emulator but more an application wrapper, why should Wine emulate an Windows application as if it where for Windows? It is for Windows already?

9. If an application does run in Wine has nothing to do with if it is resource intensive. Otherwise it wouldn't make much sense to use Wine for running games.

10. Please share with me where I can get a legal Windows Live-CD that is installable.

Just my opinion, as stated, and not meant to be offensive:
You will be more persuasive with facts. Reason your conclusions with easily provable facts, not opinions.

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