No FLOSS loving Linux user is dead to me, not even the GNOME project team, and frankly I suspect it’s noobies and non-users pushing these memes lately.
I agree. I don’t think I’ve ever actually received or witnessed the hate that the memes espouse as the norm in the Linux community. I’ve seen some “oh really, I had trouble with that so I use blank instead” or maybe even “you should try blank” (mostly when people ask though). I think most of us are too busy hating Windows to really truly hate other linux distros. We have our favorites and we will happily share that with anyone that asks, and many that don’t.
I’ve tried to stop talking about it all the time to friends and family as I don’t want to scare them off, but I am just using it everyday in front of them and showing them that I don’t have infinitely more problems than they do… Hoping it just seeps in via osmosis and at some point one too many “hey, you should buy a new computer, windows 10 is going end of life soon you know” pop-ups will set off that magical chain reaction.
When I met a close friend’s husband at an event, somehow PCs and Linux came up. He asked if I’m a Linux user (which I like to think you can’t immediately tell); I assume he wanted to build some nerd cred. I said “yeah, I technically have Linux with me right now”. He asked what I meant, so I pulled out the Steam Deck. He was unfamiliar, so I briefly explained.
When he heard it’s (obviously) a commercial product, he actually pretended to faint. And then kept acting as if I had personally insulted him, not in a joking way. I had clearly failed the purity test in that moment.
It was a strange experience. Not even in hackerspaces I’d ever had a conversation like that. So these people are rare but they do exist.
Steam Deck is one of them best things ever created. It is a great way to market Linux to masses, this is the same way Windows gained its market cap. Windows made its dominance by being the default operating system for most PCs, normal users don’t know how to install operating systems, and probably don’t even know Linux exists.
honestly if I heard someone say “I technically have linux with me right now” I would expect them to pull out an Android phone and say that Android is based on the Linux kernel (it is, its just not what anyone means when they say ‘linux’, its a pretty good example of how ‘linux’ refers to the OS and not the kernel)
Yeah fair. I expected we’d talk about how Linux could displace Windows on Desktop, to which SteamOS and Proton running on an x86 laptop chip is a lot more relevant than an Android phone.
Absolutely wild. Pretending to faint because a company sells hardware running on Linux? I feel like most of us want to be able to buy more computers that don’t just automatically come with Windows… That person sucks.
Oh come on at some point, every software project or foundation needs to cover their expenses somehow or else they enshittify or cease to exist/get acquired by a dangerous, moneyed conglomerate. It’s known as the going concern principle.
Out of all of the projects that I can think of in recent memory that started as big open source useful things, only VLC Media Player managed to avoid turning into garbage, and it’s because the lead developer is a saint.
You can avoid Ubuntu because they have a paid plan and that’s your prerogative, but imagine they got bought out by Apple or something.
I know a lot of people are fine with a paid plan, I’ve just seen what has happened to some projects like Fusion 360 where they slowly take away more and more features from the free version, slowly decrease support, and all new features go to the pro version. I would be surprised if this happens to ubuntu, but I don’t want to take that chance.
You’re acting like there isn’t another option. I could just go use Arch with KDE Plasma or something instead, or maybe Fedora which is at least somewhat separated from the ‘pro version’ (red hat)
Out of all of the projects that I can think of in recent memory that started as big open source useful things, only VLC Media Player managed to avoid turning into garbage, and it’s because the lead developer is a saint.
the Linux Kernel, Blender, Godot, Lemmy are some examples that come to mind, or maybe I’m just not understanding what you’re trying to say here
No FLOSS loving Linux user is dead to me, not even the GNOME project team, and frankly I suspect it’s noobies and non-users pushing these memes lately.
Exactly, that or trolls & saboteurs
I agree. I don’t think I’ve ever actually received or witnessed the hate that the memes espouse as the norm in the Linux community. I’ve seen some “oh really, I had trouble with that so I use blank instead” or maybe even “you should try blank” (mostly when people ask though). I think most of us are too busy hating Windows to really truly hate other linux distros. We have our favorites and we will happily share that with anyone that asks, and many that don’t.
I’ve tried to stop talking about it all the time to friends and family as I don’t want to scare them off, but I am just using it everyday in front of them and showing them that I don’t have infinitely more problems than they do… Hoping it just seeps in via osmosis and at some point one too many “hey, you should buy a new computer, windows 10 is going end of life soon you know” pop-ups will set off that magical chain reaction.
When I met a close friend’s husband at an event, somehow PCs and Linux came up. He asked if I’m a Linux user (which I like to think you can’t immediately tell); I assume he wanted to build some nerd cred. I said “yeah, I technically have Linux with me right now”. He asked what I meant, so I pulled out the Steam Deck. He was unfamiliar, so I briefly explained.
When he heard it’s (obviously) a commercial product, he actually pretended to faint. And then kept acting as if I had personally insulted him, not in a joking way. I had clearly failed the purity test in that moment.
It was a strange experience. Not even in hackerspaces I’d ever had a conversation like that. So these people are rare but they do exist.
Steam Deck is one of them best things ever created. It is a great way to market Linux to masses, this is the same way Windows gained its market cap. Windows made its dominance by being the default operating system for most PCs, normal users don’t know how to install operating systems, and probably don’t even know Linux exists.
honestly if I heard someone say “I technically have linux with me right now” I would expect them to pull out an Android phone and say that Android is based on the Linux kernel (it is, its just not what anyone means when they say ‘linux’, its a pretty good example of how ‘linux’ refers to the OS and not the kernel)
Yeah fair. I expected we’d talk about how Linux could displace Windows on Desktop, to which SteamOS and Proton running on an x86 laptop chip is a lot more relevant than an Android phone.
Absolutely wild. Pretending to faint because a company sells hardware running on Linux? I feel like most of us want to be able to buy more computers that don’t just automatically come with Windows… That person sucks.
I’m never going to feel fully satisfied using an OS that has an official ‘pro’ version.
Oh come on at some point, every software project or foundation needs to cover their expenses somehow or else they enshittify or cease to exist/get acquired by a dangerous, moneyed conglomerate. It’s known as the going concern principle.
Out of all of the projects that I can think of in recent memory that started as big open source useful things, only VLC Media Player managed to avoid turning into garbage, and it’s because the lead developer is a saint.
You can avoid Ubuntu because they have a paid plan and that’s your prerogative, but imagine they got bought out by Apple or something.
I know a lot of people are fine with a paid plan, I’ve just seen what has happened to some projects like Fusion 360 where they slowly take away more and more features from the free version, slowly decrease support, and all new features go to the pro version. I would be surprised if this happens to ubuntu, but I don’t want to take that chance.
You’re acting like there isn’t another option. I could just go use Arch with KDE Plasma or something instead, or maybe Fedora which is at least somewhat separated from the ‘pro version’ (red hat)
the Linux Kernel, Blender, Godot, Lemmy are some examples that come to mind, or maybe I’m just not understanding what you’re trying to say here
That’s fair!