Nothing will make you feel like an alpha geek more then successfully installing and running Linux. Earlier in my academic career, when I was on the techie IT trajectory, anyone who ditched Windows and used Linux was the king of geeks. Accomplishing this feat immediately gave you a throne built of pure ego that all other lesser geeks had to bow before. As my user interface professor, Dr. Murli Nagasundaram, would say about learning the command line interface "It makes you feel like more of a man [once you've learned it]." That said, it was a big goal of mine to be the Linux king. For about 3 summers I went through this cycle: I would remove Windows, install Linux, get familiar with it then abandon it when classes began, until the next summer when the cycle restarted. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but after the pain of getting Linux working on my machine, even though I enjoyed its benefits once it was working, it left a bad taste in my mouth. Consequently, when the decision to drop Linux and go back to Windows came, it was an easy choice. Furthermore, I didn't promote using Linux or talk much about it afterwards.
Stacy L. Wood and C. Page Moreau address this phenomenon in their research article "From Fear to Loathing? HowEmotion Influences the Evaluationand Early Use of Innovations" that was published in The Journal of Marketing in July of 2006. Their research showed how consumer's view of a product can be tainted by difficulties in learning new technologies, despite enjoying the product once they figure it out. In addition, oversimplifying the difficulty of learning a product can also have negative effects on consumer's view of a product. I ran into this similar problem from reading RedHat Linux's installation and operating instructions on how easy their flavor of Linux was to operate; keep in mind this was in the early 2000's when Linux was light years less user friendly then today. The study also suggests that products that are difficult to learn should come with an advocate, Best Buy's Geek Squad is mentioned, to help you get started. Years after giving up my alpha geek dreams of being the Linux master, I noticed that nearly everyone I met that had been successful in solely using Linux had a geeky mentor that helped them out.
Citations:
From Fear to Loathing? HowEmotion Influences the Evaluationand Early Use of Innovations
Journal of Marketing, Vol 70, p. 44-57
AMA Link to Article
Stacy L. Wood (University of South Carolina) and C. Page Moreau University of Colorado at Boulder)
