Ubuntu Linux Christian Edition users upset by inclusion of Evolution email client [View All]

[salvorhardin]

Earlier today I posted on Facebook and Twitter about Ubuntu Linux Christian Edition, a version of the Ubuntu Linux operating system that comes with all "the best available Linux Christian software pre-installed." At the time I joked about Ubuntu CE users being angered by the inclusion of the Evolution email and calendar program. I should learn never to joke about this kind of thing, because someone somewhere will be taking it seriously. A fellow atheist on Twitter sent me this link to a discussion thread on the Ubuntu forums from last year:

Why is there a program called Evolution in CE?

I am rather upset by the inclusion this program called Evolution in Ubuntu CE. I am unfamiliar with what this program does, but I find the word to be offensive to myself and other Christians. Would it be possible to rename Evolution or not include it as a default package? I do my best to raise my children in a household that preaches the word of God, and I find it rather dubious that Ubuntu CE should include a program that so directly contradicts the word of God.

So I did a bit more research and it turns out that Evolution's mascot is a monkey giving further credence to the fact that the developers of Evolution are Darwinists. I don't know about you but I wasn't born from a monkey, and I don't want any monkeys on my desktop to further the Darwinist agenda. How am I going to explain to the children why there is a program in Ubuntu CE called Evolution which has a leering monkey as a mascot? Please remove Evolution from our god-loving desktops.

I can sympathize with the way you felt. I'm a staunch young-earth creationist and it bothered me a bit that I might use an email client like "Evolution." So for the first two years or so that I used Linux, I used Thunderbird. Recently, I noticed that the email search is a lot faster on Evolution (I have >14,000 emails to search). So I made the switch to Evolution.

I do wish there was a way to name the application differently (in the title bar). But like the previous poster said, we got other things to worry about (~5 billion souls on their way to hell).

If you're really worried that seeing the NAME of a MAIL PROGRAM in a MENU (gasp!) will prevent you from effectively brainwashing your children, you can uninstall Evolution and install something else. Good job cathing the efforts of the Evil Satanist Conspiracy to infiltrate your home and teach your children questionable doctrines.

Maintaining your computer is your job, not the job of the developers. Judging by the responses of your coreligionists, even people in ideological agreement with you rarely object to the simple presence of the program, but if it bothers you, you should remove it. Nowhere does the Ubuntu site promise that Ubuntu is a Magic Friendly Jesus Happy Fuzzy Bunny operating system.

Some people find your insistance that the default settings for an operating system match your ideological beliefs to be just as offensive as you find the name of Evolution.

From: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1089782

Thankfully most of the posters on that thread were sane, and hopefully the OP was a Poe.