this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
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I use Arch btw
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I blame the Linux gatekeepers, keeping people on Windows. By pushing out misinformation to Linux newbies who ask a question online, and scaring them away.
There are no Linux gatekeepers. There are assholes everywhere, that's the human condition. I came across these assholes and I learnt that I should take advice and consider it myself.
If you close your brain and listen to random online people without thought, you'll have a bad time, Linux or no Linux.
This stereotype of people in Linux or open source as assholes is FUD spread by people who have a vested interest in spreading it.
I've found people mostly very helpful and courteous.
idk I think that only the Chosen should be allowed to use Linux
Annointed with the holy kernel, untainted by binary blobs.
worshipping false idols now, are we?
Looking forward to see someone creating a TempleOS fork with a Linux Libre kernel in their spare time.
And wear sackcloth and ashes while scourging ourselves while reading error logs.
Not only misinformation, but straight up condescending unhelpful answers, sometimes.
You're talking about Arch and Gentoo users, aren't you?
New user: which distro should I use?
Arch users: definitely Arch, it's so easy and stable!
Anti Commercial-AI license
i mean tbh ive never had issues with arch i couldnt solve without a quick google(neither has a update ever broken anything) and manjaro sets everything up 4 u
You also know all of the terminology, what a console is, what you're searching for when something goes wrong, what sites are likely to have his answers, and how to search for it in a way that works.
That's fine for tech literate people willing to spend time on that. But non tech newbies don't want to open a console. Recommending Arch to them is a shit move.
Anti Commercial-AI license
Perhaps it's changed in the years since I ditched Windows, but at least for a good while, just knowing what Linux was as a concept already represented a certain degree of awareness of tech that would have me surprised if they were unable to do any sort of troubleshooting. Whether or not they decide it's worth their time to do so was a different matter, of course.
That said, while being too hostile to new users is detrimental to broader adoption, the level of handholding that many users want just isn't reasonable to expect from a free OS being supported by volunteers. There's only so many times I'm going to put up with something like:
"My computer says it has an error."
"What's the error?"
"I don't know, it doesn't work."
on and on for a dozen messages or more only to realize the message is literally right in front of them the whole time and they're just deliberately being helpless, rather than put in any modicum of effort. After a while, I'm looking up if anyone has found a method to throttle someone via the internet the next time I see one.
Yes, you do need a certain level of independence to run Linux. I'm not sure why we make so many excuses for self-sabotage with computers, though. These are ubiquitous devices, and they've been around for a fair bit. I could understand someone who retired in the early 90s never having gotten into them, but it's absurd otherwise. So many people have an attitude with computers that would be like someone who's never looked at a cookbook, a youtube cooking channel or even done a cursory google search for a recipe coming to a stranger and saying, "Hey, I'm bad at cooking, so I don't get all this cooking stuff, but could you teach me to make beef bourguignon? Oh, and I need you to do it for free. What do you mean, 'chop the onions'? I told you I'm not a culinary person, I don't know this stuff. What, I need a knife for this? Oh my god, this is so complicated, can't you just show me an easy way?"
Even the person with the best of intentions will burn out helping with this sort of stuff, day after day, in their spare time. When it comes to tech support, many non-tech people have an absolutely insane sense of entitlement to the time and effort of strangers volunteering on the internet. Unless someone whips up an absolutely idiot-proof UI for Linux that is entirely self-explanatory, users will need to choose between putting in some amount of effort in the form of educating themselves even the slightest bit, or paying for the privilege of having someone else manage their computing and be at the mercy of that third-party whenever it makes a decision they dislike enough, or just ceases providing support altogether.
i feel like using a computer makes you part of the tech people and im sure theres an arch clone out there with a gui for tha aur also typing in like 2 lines aint gonna kill anyone people who google do it on the daily