Open Source Pizza
January 21st, 2010 by ComputerBob
I’m always looking for a good analogy/metaphor to use when I’m explaining Linux to people.
Here’s my latest one. I haven’t given it a whole lot of thought yet, so this will be an incomplete first draft of my initial thoughts, off the top of my head. I may leave it as it stands now, or I may end up refining it later on.
I like to think of desktop operating sytems like pizzas:
Windows is a highly advertised, expensive, store-bought pizza that only comes with a limited choice of toppings, a limited amount of the few toppings that it offers, and no choice of crust. If you want more toppings, you have to buy them separately, and many of them cost twice as much as the original pizza itself. The box that it comes in doesn’t contain a list list of its ingredients — you’re just supposed to trust that they’re all healthy and safe for you to eat. It’s dangerous to eat it unless you fully bake it, but it burns extremely easy if you overbake it by even a few seconds. People who have eaten real, homemade pizza know that Windows pizza doesn’t taste very good, but because it’s highly advertised and every store sells it, most people are used to how it tastes — and many people even think that that’s what pizza is supposed to taste like.
Like Windows, Mac is a highly advertised, expensive, store-bought pizza that comes with a limited choice of toppings, a limited amount of the few toppings that it offers, and no choice of crust. If you want more toppings, you have to buy them separately, and many of them cost twice as much as the original pizza itself. The box that it comes in doesn’t contain a list list of its ingredients — you’re just supposed to trust that they’re all healthy and safe for you to eat. It’s very easy to cook and it tastes a lot like homemade pizza, but most people either can’t afford it, or — because they’ve been raised on Windows pizza — they think Mac pizza tastes funny.
Linux is fresh, homemade pizza, with as much of as many toppings as anyone might want, and plenty of types of crust. And all of its ingredients are completely free and a list of ingredients is always provided. It’s delicious, real pizza, but you have to make it yourself from the individual ingredients.
With all of that in mind, Ubuntu, Mepis, Mint, PCLOS and probably most other Linux distros are fresh, homemade, “take and bake” pizzas that others have made for you. Each one comes with different pre-selected types and amounts of toppings and crust, but you are free to add, remove or modify any or all of their ingredients; or even develop new flavor combinations of your own.
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