Lucy Linux: The Aftermath

by John Martellaro

April 16, 1999

"Had I known I was going to be such a success, I would have studied harder in school."

-- Jim Davis (Creator of Garfield)

About the best I can do here is try to figure out what I've done and clean up some loose ends. Of course, I got more email that I have ever received on anything I've ever written. My thanks to all of you. Then there was the furor over at slashdot.org.

Don't ask me how that happened.

More Broken Hearts

Lucy is a heartbreaker, it seems, in more ways than one. Apparently the Linux community has been playing with penguins far too long. (I mean that all in good fun.) So when I pulled a metaphor out of the hat and associated a different image, a great looking blond, with Linux ... there was, to put it mildly, pandemonium.

I started out trying to tell Macintosh enthusiasts, politely and with some entertainment, that they needed to have a better perspective about Linux. Some of the things that, in the past, made it not ready for Prime Time are being rapidly fixed. As one reader pointed out, it's easier to start with a stable OS and add a pretty GUI than to start with a pretty GUI and add stability later. Which, of course, is exactly what Apple is working so hard to do with Veronica (MacOS 8.6.)

What I found out, which is of great value, is a lot about the mentality of the Linux community. At least those who take the time to mill around on the Net and communicate there.

Writing does have its rewards.

The Contest

The contest was won the evening the article appeared. A lot of people correctly guessed that Lucy Linux was Peta Wilson, the star of the USA Network TV show La Femme Nikita in which she plays an assassin/operative for an ultra secret antiterrorist organization based in Germany. (I think it's actually filmed in Vancouver.) There were no wrong guesses on her. If you'd like to see more pictures of Ms. Wilson, check the La Femme Nikita page. (Warning: the montage of pictures takes a long time to load.)

Miss Mac was more difficult. A lot of readers thought it was Alyssa Milano. I must admit, that was a very good guess. But Miss Mac is actually Joanna Going. lately of the movie Still Breathing and often remembered for her role in the 1991 TV show Dark Shadows. She's one of my favorite actresses. Some of the Linux guys complained that the picture of Miss Mac was in back and white, and tried to draw some inferences. I just picked the best picture I could find that was tasteful. But for those who wanted it, here is a color picture of Joanna

The contest winner was D. Robertson in California who gets a set of Apple "Think Different" posters. Congratulations!

I guess I'm going to have to contact the agents for these actresses now and ask if they want to become the corresponding official semiofficial mascots. Hmmm. Loads of trouble there. Maybe I better rethink that.

Readers With a Punch

There were some terrific reader comments. I'll quote two very special ones here because they amplify and clarify the point of the original essay so well. Charles Martin wrote:

Dear John:

A quick note (and thanks to Tom Williams at Motorola for the fwd) for your article about Linux. You're absolutely right, and the graphic really took my breath away (no, not the girl -- okay that too)! That screenshot represents what I've been waiting YEARS to see, and what I expect MacOS X Server to be very much like -- the power of UNIX combined with the elegance of the Mac front end.

Indeed, the only point I'd challenge is that we should worry that Linux will "steal the heart and mind of the businessman." Most Mac users WANT Linux to steal their hearts and minds, for three reasons:

1. It's not a Microsoft product, and more importantly, it's not got a Microsoft mentality to it. Mac addicts aren't, as David Pogue once pointed out, actually Apple fans so much as they are ELEGANCE addicts. We want systems that are SUPERIOR to win out. For consumer/desktop OSes, we think that happens to be MacOS. For server/power/ubergeek OSes, it's clearly Linux.

2. We would be hypocrites if we didn't pull for the underdogs -- ALL of em! Hey, I'm still hoping somebody actually does something with the Amiga fer chrissakes! We WANT Linux to succeed. They're not our rivals, they're our allies in destroying both the Microsoft monopoly and many of the notions of "platform" and "software" business models (which Apple has until very recently been part of) that have kept computing FAR behind where it should be. The only "paradigms" (ugh) that will make it through the next 10 years are the ones who "think different." Linux is doing it, and Apple's learning fast.

3. MacOS X will quickly evolve into just another sort of Linux/UNIX. Linux's success means rewards for ALL of us -- Linux fans and Mac fans alike. This more than anything will finally push us all into a platform-free model that isn't so different than what the open source people are pushing. I don't think the future's quite as they see it, but come 2002 or so we will all be on a VERY different playing field than where we are now. As the developer said to the Floridian, "take a good look around, cuz the only way you're going to see it like this again is if you close your eyes."

 Kurt Granroth wrote:

John,

I just read your essay on "Lucy Linux" on applelinks.com (linked from SlashDot, of course). I loved it!

I'll admit that I've always felt that Mac and Linux users were "blood brothers" of a sort. At work, our Grand Poobahs have dictated that we ALL use WindowsNT *unless* we can provide a business reason to use Unix. Macintosh is out of the question. As a result, the former Mac users have largely rallied around those of us who are pushing Linux (another "forbidden" OS -- Unix == Solaris|HPUX|AIX, obviously). It's a strange combination, the users of the ultimate newbie computer with the users of the ultimate geek computer. It works, though! Both groups are used to innovating to get things done... and with KDE, it's not hard to convince the former Mac users to switch.

On that note, the Mac-like nature of KDE will only deepen over time... if you want it to. KDE will be *much* more "themeable" in the 2.0 release. You already saw the kinda-like-Mac screenshot. Well, the current development snapshots are capable of displaying ALL widgets (buttons, menus, etc) so that they look exactly like the Mac Platinum style.

By the time KDE 2.0 comes out, it will be possible to configure KDE to look almost *identical* to any flavor of Mac you want.

Of course, if you want something different, there is always:

http://kde.themes.org/images/DrawingBoard.jpg

or

http://www.kde.org/screenshots/medium/ganroth.jpg

Finally, and I just can't resist, Mike Kerr wrote:

Just curious...

What does Wendy Windows98 look like?

What a setup. I suppose I could take a good guess, but I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to search the Net for a suitable mascot for Windows. Wendy Windows, where are you? I'll publish anything you find that is funny and appropriate. (We gotta draw the line somewhere.)

Lessons Learned

If there is one thing I've learned from this, it's that there is a huge amount of untapped synergy that exists between the Linux and the Apple camps. There are a lot of people out there who love the Mac, but (and I'm included) have a great appreciation for Linux and what its followers are trying to do.

From my perspective, Apple as a company is so focused on its OS products and its hardware initiatives that they appear, on the surface at least, to be ignoring possible gains by embracing the Linux community. I have argued in the past that Apple has political and market reasons why they have elected not to bundle LinuxPPC or some variant with PPC hardware and formally sell it themselves. It's possible that that position will be reevaluated over time. It's certainly an idea that I will take to WWDC with me next month, but I fear nothing much will happen until, some day, a senior Apple executive wakes up and gets the physicist's "Aha!".

I learned that may Linux users are inordinately obsessed with free software -- in contrast to their Macintosh brethren. Unfortunately, most of the things in this world that are truly valuable come at a price. Macintosh users, who grew up with elegance and excellence seem to understand that. On the other hand, Macintosh users need to give up their fear of Linux, something they have perceived as an omigod, scary-to-use Ubergeek OS.

I think I learned that there is no adequate conduit on the Net between the Linux and Apple communities. We have our Web sites and they have theirs, and there really is no dialog going on between them. Macintosh and Linux enthusiasts share a lot in common and could benefit from working together, but it's not happening. Perhaps, with the help of some of you out there, some progress can be made in this area. I'm open to ideas.

Lucy Linux and Miss Mac are natural, powerful allies. Working together, we could probably heave Billy boy right into the punch bowl.