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.
Unfortunately, they are the loud minority and other arch users don’t tell them to spout such nonsense. Recommending the distro to linux newbies is not helpful. The minority will be willing to open a console in order to get stuff done. When I started, all I wanted was it to work and never see a console. Recommendations like gentoo and arch might’ve turned me a way from linux altogether.
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.
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
I don’t hate ms bullshit anymore, people are free to use anything else. Now, i am just glad that the average consumer software is garbage, and we can look like wizards and get some cash when we automate lengthy processes for corpos that got used to the inefficiency.
I’ll get angry again if the ads show up in business licensed copies of Windows since I have to use Windows at work. And at least work won’t make me upgrade from 10 until 2025
Woe is me, I can’t install other operating systems on my work computer. I’m being paid for every hour Microsoft bugs me or refuses to do what I want it though so, oh well. More time to shitpost and vent on Lemmy!
I stopped using Windows over a decade ago and Padme is right. My windows using friends are always mad about some change or another and I’m just chill as a cucumber.
I feel a sense of ownership over my OS. I tinker, I experiment, I break things and sometimes I fix them.
I still get mad, but it’s our problem. We got here together and I know that we can do better.
Windows feels like renting. The landlord only shows up when I’m not ready, fixes stuff that wasn’t broken, doesn’t fix any of the things that I need fixed, keeps raising the rent and installing hidden cameras. If I want to fix anything, it costs way more, is way harder because the landlord won’t tell me where anything is, gets un-fixed every time the landlord visits, and after all that it’s just fixing someone else’s house.
This is the first time I’ve ever wanted a reward system on any social media platform. Sure, I’ve used Steam rewards and such because they’re there. I put emojis on chat messages, etc.
In my last job I had colleagues using Windows, and they were super chill. When they turned on their computer in the morning, it took 20 minutes to boot, install the latest updates and log on. I had to start working right away, while they were having their third coffee and second cigarette, waiting for their computer to get ready. I’m sure it wasn’t healthy, but relaxing.
did they ever start actually doing anything useful?
between sharepoint and microflop dynamics-CRM, azure and windows (whatever the fuck version)
and mother-fucking oracle, I can often go days after booting up before I can do anything useful.
Sometimes I think the only people who can do any work are the procurement team and the only work they can do is issue MS purchase orders.
That sounds like poor IT policies to me. In previous office jobs I've had, our computers were configured with our working hours and we wouldn't shut them down at the end of the day, so that any updates could happen off the clock and minimize that sort of disruption.
Padme is right. My windows using friends are always mad about some change or another and I’m just chill as a cucumber.
I’m very much not-chill for a variety of reasons. Mainly because it’s a prime example of what’s been made abundantly clear the last couple of years: once you get users on your platform, they will never leave, regardless of how much abuse you throw at them.
For another, there’s a stupid idiom that goes around all the time that goes something along the lines of “if you don’t like it, don’t buy/use/do it!” as if their decisions don’t affect your personal choices. A prime example is headphone jacks on phones. Linux has the potential to be so much more useful with even a miniscule fraction of the funding (like 0.001%) that companies like MS and Apple have.
It’s incredibly frustrating asking people to consider doing something in their own best interests and being mocked and ridiculed in return or even listening to them excuse and defend their abusers.
I used to evangelize for Linux. It sucked and I was frustrated often. Now I happily use Linux and contribute to it without trying to convert anyone. Much more emotionally peaceful.
Actually you still absolutely do, since Microsoft has in the past, and probably still, actively sabotaged the ability to run other operating systems on gener computation devices.
They do in more quiet ways nowadays. Microsoft Office and GamePass, for example, can only be used on Windows (unless you count the cloud versions that work through the browser).
Then there’s workplaces which most workplaces use Windows. You cannot escape it there.
My workplace is in the process of locking down remote work to where you can’t use Linux for anything anymore. I was looking for a way to remote in using Linux so I could ditch my Windows devices but even that is not going to be an option for me. Defender is enabling that type of stuff more easily in the name of security.
Back in the 90s, before the DOJ v Microsoft antitrust trial, Microsoft’s licensing terms with OEMs required them to pay MS for every unit sold — even units that did not come with Windows. This meant that if Dell or HP or whoever wanted to offer Linux as an option, they’d still need to pay Microsoft for Windows or else lose the ability to sell Windows at all. It made no sense to offer Linux PCs at that point.
Just one of many many examples of Microsoft’s illegal anti-competitive behaviors.
It’s more complicated than anger for me. There’s the disappointment that they’ve sunk so far, worry that other programs that I use could follow, but also some relief that I switched when I did.
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