Linux - fairly new user's perspective

[PMizuki]

so, um, I'm not exactly sure how to phrase this nicely

I have been distro hopping for a bit, and currently settled on endeavour
and it's honestly been pretty nice (cinnamon is the best DE ever change my mind)

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I just kinda have the feeling that since everything is made by different people and not a centric entity like microsoft, dramas seem to happen a lot
like when grub won't detect other OSes unless you manually add a setting to it, because there was some beef between the grub dev and that OS scan module's dev or something

or when literally every single distro ever have people screaming at the tops of their lungs about how it is the worst distro to have ever existed and anyone using it is a peasant

or the endless tirade about vim/nano/emac whatever (I personally like nano)
or when I found out about systemd and how it's the worst thing to ever existed and anyone using it is not using it the "true" unix-way and should just go back to using windows like a peasant, probably the most divisive piece of software I have ever seen
something something openrc superior 
as someone who only have a super basic knowledge moving on from windows (I don't even know what openrc is), they all just seem real alien language

and I feel like myself using (and being fairly comfortable with) systemd is a crime against the linux community 
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or when I stumbled on (lots of) people who were like NOOOO CLI is the best only windows PEASANTS would ever want a GUI for anything
(for the record no I am fairly comfortable with the shell, I just like GUIs)

the linux community seem to regard anyone using windows for any reason at all as some kind of PEASANTS, ms SHEEPLE, tech illiterate, inferior human beings or something
I personally am very much on the "just use things you like and make you feel at home" and w7 have been my "feel at home" for like almost a decade
I do know about the privacy bullshit of windows
I do know that every OSes out there have their pros and cons and I wish people could just realize that instead of screaming and bashing about how "muh OS I use is superior" (all OSes have these kind of people but the linux community's altitude toward windows is the worst I have seen in this regard)

I, I don't know
it just seems like everywhere I go there's people screaming about how I'm using linux the WRONG way and I must follow them or else I'm just a wannabe user who's only using it to feel superior over the "windoze peasants"
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also, it's definitely just me, and this is literally one person, but from what I have seen the stereotype about OSS devs being giant egocentric assholes is kinda um...not false?
https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/issues/1120
https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/issues/911

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so um, just my perspective
I'm writing this on endeavour so it's not like I hate linux or something
the community is probably much better than this, and maybe what I have seen is just fringe cases
I hope I didn't offend anybody...

[RageTester]

People that are happy with what they got don't waste a ton of time talking about OS that just works.

It makes sense that you stumble open a ton of complaints, we humans are great in that way of helping others even if it doesn't benefit us.

I see nothing wrong with using both windows 7 and linux at the same time, that's what I do... And yeah I spent ton of time trying to share internet from RPi 400 via USB to ethernet adapter. In the end gave up and bought a 2nd network switch. Some things work better on windows, some on linux.

[Master Disaster]

Its not like the stuff you mentioned is specific to Linux users, you also get Windows users who berate people for running Windows 10 or not knowing how to do X and you also get the crossplatform trolls intent on starting a debate over *nix v Win v Mac and why one is FAR superior to the others.

 

When I jumped into Arch I did so expecting a struggle. Why? Because I'd heard the Arch community is not very welcoming to newbies. Turns out this is only partially true, the Arch community is very welcome to newbies as long as you demonstrate a basic level of competence, the fact you've tried everything you know of to debug the issue yourself first and/or its not something that's already covered in detail in the Arch wiki. Arch is setup in such a way as the user is supposed to have a certain level of understanding with using Linux and the community for Arch holds this value very strongly.

 

On the flip side you have Pop/Mint/Ubuntu which are billed as "new user friendly, just works" distros. You can jump onto Canonicals forums and ask pretty much anything you want, you'll always get an answer because those communities expect new users to struggle a bit at first.

 

I do agree that some of the really advanced users can be elitist about their platform but not everyone is like that and actually, most of the Arch user's I've talked to here tend to agree that A) proprietary software isn't bad, B) sometimes users might really need something proprietary and C) you should use what you like and are comfortable with.

 

On the sysd v orc topic, that would be the elitists I mentioned earlier. OpenRC is the default service manager on Gentoo Linux, it fully replaces Systemd. The argument stems from the fact that Systemd has grown over the years and is now pretty bloated and is being used to control things it was never really intended to (like for example did you know you can use Systemd to handle mounting network drives instead of fstab?) and I think most Linux users wouldn't necessarily disagree that having a single daemon controlling most of the OSes core services is not ideal but what the Gentoo elitists won't tell you is that OpenRC now has optional modules that allow it to perform many of the same functions as Systemd does out of the box. Sure they're optional and I get the whole "install just what you need" philosophy but the fact they've had to make orc do much of the stuff sysd did shows that, at least some of that functionality is required (or at least desirable).

[10leej]

This is why I don't partake in mailing lists and stick around here and only one actual linux community.

The problem with Linux is that there's so much diversity that it's both a benefit and a drawback. And the open nature breeds hostility (a great alternative example is politics here).

That said, ask someone who complains about systemd on what internet browser they use. Because none of the browsers besides a very select few align with the Unix philosophy.

[OhioYJ]

46 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Turns out this is only partially true, the Arch community is very welcome to newbies as long as you demonstrate a basic level of competence, the fact you've tried everything you know of to debug the issue yourself first and/or its not something that's already covered in detail in the Arch wiki. Arch is setup in such a way as the user is supposed to have a certain level of understanding with using Linux and the community for Arch holds this value very strongly.

 

On the flip side you have Pop/Mint/Ubuntu which are billed as "new user friendly, just works" distros. You can jump onto Canonicals forums and ask pretty much anything you want, you'll always get an answer because those communities expect new users to struggle a bit at first.

 

This. Basically did you try and search a little yourself. However, this tends to happen with all things across to a degree. On XDA, the Huawei forums tend to be a little less newbie friendly, however OnePlus and Samsung pretty much ask whatever you want. In the Jeep world, Pirate4x4 created a dedicated section for "newbie" questions.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

a great quote i saw online: "Linux is only free if you don't value your time". that's my perspective on it. i use it often as for some stuff i need ti's just the best option, but it's much more time consuming than my macbook pro.

 

with my macbook i just set it up, updates are seamless and if something does go wrong i can just restore from a time machine backup and be up and running again within an hour. 

[Sauron]

6 hours ago, PMizuki said:

or the endless tirade about vim/nano/emac whatever (I personally like nano)

This comes from before Linux was a thing, I consider it a bit of a joke controversy

5 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

A) proprietary software isn't bad, B) sometimes users might really need something proprietary and C) you should use what you like and are comfortable with.

I agree with B and mostly with C, not really with A though. I do believe the existence of proprietary software is detrimental to computing overall. Though of course, It's not something to blame the users for.

5 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

I think most Linux users wouldn't necessarily disagree that having a single daemon controlling most of the OSes core services is not ideal

I would argue it's more ideal than using a dozen daemons to do the same exact thing but with 12 times the hassle. It's cool to have a modular system but at some point some efficiency considerations must be made. Besides, most of the criticisms levied at systemd could be directed at the kernel, too. I'd be concerned if systemd wasn't open source or if it were completely unreplaceable but... it's neither of those things.

 

I think a lot of the issues in the Linux/OSS communities stem from the same root as other problems in other niche communities; unfortunately they sometimes attract some of the worst elements of society. Don't let yourself be discouraged by a few loud assholes

[PMizuki]

aw thank you all! and yeah most of my experiences have been pretty nice, it was just that the bad parts stick out real hard...
I think I'll be here for years to come, it's really comfortable for me ^^

I'd say that I disagree with your opinion that proprietary softwares in and of itself is detrimental, but I don't really feel like arguing and I'm sure I don't know enough to actually argue lol
but like, I can see where you come from, and at the end of the day everyone just uses whatever suits them really, it's their computer ^^

[Master Disaster]

13 minutes ago, PMizuki said:

aw thank you all! and yeah most of my experiences have been pretty nice, it was just that the bad parts stick out real hard...
I think I'll be here for years to come, it's really comfortable for me ^^

I'd say that I disagree with your opinion that proprietary softwares in and of itself is detrimental, but I don't really feel like arguing and I'm sure I don't know enough to actually argue lol
but like, I can see where you come from, and at the end of the day everyone just uses whatever suits them really, it's their computer ^^

Here's my take, ovbs I cannot speak for @Sauronthough...

 

Windows, and to a lesser extent macOS, is responsible for training users that things can only be done in a very defined way. Its (IMO) the reason why people who have been used to Windows forever have such a hard time transitioning across to Linux, they're indoctrinated to the Microsoft way and expect things to work the same everywhere because that's the only way they've ever known.

 

IMO its not that all proprietary software is bad, more that it is responsible for some bad practices and behaviours.

 

And OFC its in Microsofts best interest that users remain attached to their proprietary ecosystem because they're a for profit business and the customer is the money.

 

On the flip side to this argument, software development tends to move faster in applications where its a compensated job and not just a hobby/side project and (again IMO) that's important for everyone. Like it or not macOS & Windows have both caused revolutions in how users interact with their computers in the past, Linux tends to get the really nice stuff months or even years later. 2 perfect examples from just my desktop are FreeSync support and HDR support. The Linux kernel does apparently have HDR modules but for whatever reason HDR support is still absent in Linux and Freesync really annoys me, I believe Nvidia have G Sync working on Linux yet AMD, the more open source friendly of the 2 still provide no way on enabling FS on Linux.

[Sauron]

29 minutes ago, PMizuki said:

I'd say that I disagree with your opinion that proprietary softwares in and of itself is detrimental, but I don't really feel like arguing and I'm sure I don't know enough to actually argue lol

5 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

IMO its not that all proprietary software is bad, more that it is responsible for some bad practices and behaviours.

Note that when I say proprietary software is inherently detrimental I don't mean that any specific proprietary software is bad or shouldn't be used just because it's proprietary. I mean that it being proprietary makes the world a little worse than it would be if it were FOSS. Withholding the source code for a software people's livelihoods may depend on is essentially a blackmailing tactic.

 

For instance, Microsoft has a de facto monopoly on most professional computing environments; I couldn't even use a mac to do my job, let alone Linux (short of just using a VM, which kinda defeats the purpose). If for whatever reason Microsoft decides they no longer intend to maintain a Windows version that I absolutely need for compatibility with something else (which I also don't have the source for), I'm pretty much screwed. This is a problem that is inherent to proprietary software and would just go away if we required source disclosure and waived a large chunk of intellectual property protections.

[Alexeygridnev1993]

I know it may be hard, but just ignore that elitist RTFM kind of crowd. If you ignore that, you’ll find a lot of people who are actually willing to help to newbies to the best of their abilities.

[Jaesop]

11 hours ago, Ashley MLP Fangirl said:

a great quote i saw online: "Linux is only free if you don't value your time". that's my perspective on it. i use it often as for some stuff i need ti's just the best option, but it's much more time consuming than my macbook pro.

Once it's up and running I can't think of a scenario where Linux takes more time to use?...

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

7 hours ago, Jaesop said:

Once it's up and running I can't think of a scenario where Linux takes more time to use?...

but the time it takes to get up and running is significantly longer. not to mention it bricking from updates is far more common than macOS. 

[Jaesop]

20 hours ago, Ashley MLP Fangirl said:

but the time it takes to get up and running is significantly longer. not to mention it bricking from updates is far more common than macOS. 

Depending on the distro, the first bit is often completely untrue. I mean, yeah, you install it but it's a graphical installer like any other OS if you're using Ubuntu or something similar. We're talking what - 15 minutes if you take your time?

 

Also, not sure how often Linux installs are 'bricked'? Can't say I've ever had a significant system issue from a normal update.

[Master Disaster]

4 hours ago, Jaesop said:

Depending on the distro, the first bit is often completely untrue. I mean, yeah, you install it but it's a graphical installer like any other OS if you're using Ubuntu or something similar. We're talking what - 15 minutes if you take your time?

 

Also, not sure how often Linux installs are 'bricked'? Can't say I've ever had a significant system issue from a normal update.

I believe she (sorry if that's the wrong pronoun but you do have girl in your name) is referring to application setup time more than OS setup time but even this isn't really true anymore. Yeah going back a few years it wasn't abnormal for a downloaded app to include a load of sample configs with the expectation that the user will go create their own custom tailored install (SAMBA was particularly bad about this) but these days most things come with sane defaults OOTB and most also enable and run any daemons at install time too, you only really need to spend time customising things if you need something specific otherwise its usually fine to install, run then use.