This is NOT going Well… Linux Gaming Challenge Pt.2

[DanMcCarthy]

7 hours ago, Mortons said:

In all honesty, I have been watching Linus videos for a long time. Not a real fan of this series. I believe its only doing damage to the linux community.

Personally, I quite disagree that it is "only doing damage to the linux community". While it is unfortunate that issues faced during the challenge can create bad PR for a distro or software, positives are already coming from the series. Linus' issue with installing Steam on Pop is causing the Pop team and Debian team to each look into solutions to improve apt in response.

 

While I don't agree with all of the conclusions or issues presented, but I think great improvements can come from them. People have issues coming from Windows to Linux all the time, but when Linus and Luke have issues, it offers a great opportunity for maintainers to make genuine improvements. To that end, I don't think it's fair to say it only does harm.

[Arika]

7 hours ago, Mortons said:

Also I would find this a more subjective series if the same amount of research was put into this Linux challenge as you would something a Windows challenge. Linus is a very smart person. I would think he would do some research so he doesn't go into a project expecting it to fail. 

That completely defeats the point of the series.

 

the whole point is "Can a person who has only ever used Windows, switch to Linux?"

 

The way they have done it, is exactly the same amount of research that anyone else would do.

• google which distro to use
• install it
• try it out
• mess around

and they are documenting their experience. the series IS their research....that's the point.

[Gimmick21]

4 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

Fragmentation because of "flavour of the month" is the very thing holding it back.

You cannot get rid of the fragmentation first and then create a distro, that everyone contributes to.

You have to create a distro, that everyone likes, so the fragmentation is removed automatically because everyone wants to contribute.

 

But because there is no such thing, that everyone likes (it's not like nobody tried ^^), you end up in situations like the one we currently have.

Fortunately, there are companies that see economic benefits in Linux and therefore invest in it. And luckily, a big player from the game industry is finally joining too.

 

That may not fix "issues" like apt != pacman, but from my view that's not even an issue worth mentioning. On a different OS, the package-manager has a different name... ok, Editor from Windows is gedit in Ubuntu... nobody will inevitably fail with Linux because of this  

[Stahlmann]

2 hours ago, Arika S said:

That completely defeats the point of the series.

 

the whole point is "Can a person who has only ever used Windows, switch to Linux?"

 

The way they have done it, is exactly the same amount of research that anyone else would do.

• google which distro to use
• install it
• try it out
• mess around

and they are documenting their experience. the series IS their research....that's the point.

No matter how many times this is brought up there will always be some people being butthurt about how this series "misrepresents" the entry level Linux experience. I stopped trying to argue about that. I can relate with the mistakes they've made, and i see myself behaving very similar with the problems they've run into. But nevertheless the 3rd video's forum thread will again explode in the first few hours over multiple pages of the same people arguing over the same thing over and over again. I was personally very interested in the whole discussion about this topic, but now it's getting old with people just repeating the same things again and again.

 

And as a person who occationally thought about trying out Linux i can now say i agree with Linus and Luke. The main thing keeping me away from Linux is not Linux, but the people around it.

 

It's just funny how everything that goes wrong in Linux is just the user's fault. That's basically the TL;DR of these 2 threads. I get that windows isn't perfect, but all these times i researched problems for Windows i never got someone blaming me. I got to a solution and that's it.

[Arika]

8 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

And as a person who occationally thought about trying out Linux i can now say i agree with Linus and Luke. The main thing keeping me away from Linux is not Linux, but the people around it.

As someone who has 3 out of 4 computers running Linux, Using Linux is """""fine"""""" (after the hours and hours of figuring out things i shouldn't have to), trying to get help with Linux is ...... well lets just say; i hope i don't run into any other problems.

[emosun]

1 hour ago, cursed_ethernet said:

Hardware and software companies won't invest in supporting Linux officially until enough people start using it, and that won't happen unless people accept that as an early adopter, there's going to be a learning curve.

Yea the first Iphone had the same issue where most if not all aspects of it required commands to be typed into the command line. it wasn't until i iphone 7 that they finally came up with a non CLI os that they finally had the resources to develop the os into a gui. but it took a few billion regular people typing into command lines in order to get to that point

[jj9987]

1 hour ago, cursed_ethernet said:

Linux is an OS made by programmers for programmers and other technically inclined people

I don't agree.

 

First, the obvious - Linux is just a kernel, not an OS. There are tons of distributions, so everyone could find a suitable one, whether you are first time computer user or someone, who has worked on the Linux kernel for years.

Second, why should it be limited to technical people only? If you only stick to technical people, who can find technical solutions, the simple problems will go unseen. A very good example was in 1st part, where Linus managed to wipe his XServer via command line - yea, there were problems with all involved parties, but it shouldn't be this difficult to install a simple program.

Third, Arch is not suitable for someone who is just starting out to learn about Linux. There's a whole lot of stuff you can break already during the installation. After that, why would a simple computer user want to deal with installing their own audio drivers, when Ubuntu/Mint/Fedora and others have it packaged already? Every distro has it's place - you're a Linux guru or you want a real challenge then sure, go try out Arch or LFS. But if you are not that advanced user, who wants to try a Windows alternative, then it shouldn't be that hard to enter the Linux world.

 

I'm gonna leave out some technical details/comments, these are more nitpicks than about the bigger picture here.

[Sho2048]

3 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

It's just funny how everything that goes wrong in Linux is just the user's fault.

But is the fault of users or the code of the kernel or the maintainers if drivers are half baked, software is getting nowhere near the same amount of love as for Windows and MacOS from companies and so on?

 

Is the fault of users that there are no funds for UX or UI?

Is it the fault of users if Linux has not enough market share? 

Is it the fault of users if Pulseaudio has bugs?

Is it the fault of users if Linux does not follow some conventions unique to DOS?

Is it the fault of users if distros are different from one another?

And on and on…

We can all agree that there's a lot of work to be done to make Linux more enjoyable or that there is a good chance that you might have issues. What I can not agree on is blaming it on users. No Linux user ever asked to be ignored by hardware manufactuers or software companies. In fact this is very close to the issue @LinusTechbrings up about Apple's audio products from time to time; if you go Linux you're the second class client, sometimes not even considered one. Same as Airpods, that give you zero control outside of the iOS ecosystem. But someone claims that it is the fault of Android, or Windows, or Linux, that they do not come with the features that Apple only reserves for their ecosystem? I don't think so. Yet we have users here candidly (and toxicly) claiming that free open source developers go out of their way to support every single device under the sky, when there's companies like Apple making non-standard bullshit stuff all the time just to fuck with their users.

 

More often than not this community (the LTT one) seems to think that Linux users do vodoo on other people to fuck with their system or introduce bugs or something to spite other people. I've seen plenty of debbie downers and endless comments with dumb memes and toxic jokes under every single LTT video, in the Discord, in the Facebook page comments. So let's burn down LTT for that?

[Stahlmann]

42 minutes ago, Sho2048 said:

But is the fault of users or the code of the kernel or the maintainers if drivers are half baked, software is getting nowhere near the same amount of love as for Windows and MacOS from companies and so on?

 

Is the fault of users that there are no funds for UX or UI?

Is it the fault of users if Linux has not enough market share? 

Is it the fault of users if Pulseaudio has bugs?

Is it the fault of users if Linux does not follow some conventions unique to DOS?

Is it the fault of users if distros are different from one another?

And on and on…

We can all agree that there's a lot of work to be done to make Linux more enjoyable or that there is a good chance that you might have issues. What I can not agree on is blaming it on users. No Linux user ever asked to be ignored by hardware manufactuers or software companies. In fact this is very close to the issue @LinusTechbrings up about Apple's audio products from time to time; if you go Linux you're the second class client, sometimes not even considered one. Same as Airpods, that give you zero control outside of the iOS ecosystem. But someone claims that it is the fault of Android, or Windows, or Linux, that they do not come with the features that Apple only reserves for their ecosystem? I don't think so. Yet we have users here candidly (and toxicly) claiming that free open source developers go out of their way to support every single device under the sky, when there's companies like Apple making non-standard bullshit stuff all the time just to fuck with their users.

 

More often than not this community (the LTT one) seems to think that Linux users do vodoo on other people to fuck with their system or introduce bugs or something to spite other people. I've seen plenty of debbie downers and and endless comments with dumb memes and toxic jokes under every single LTT video, in the Discord, in the Facebook page comments. So let's burn down LTT for that?

What i talked about is that on Linux when you encounter a problem you face people trying to defend Linux itself, like you are right now instead of just helping the user having the problem.

 

Yes, Windows has better software support because it's more popular. But just because i acknowledge that fact that doesn't mean the problem isn't still there on Linux.

 

As an end-user i don't care who is to blame. If a problem or incompatibility is there i want to know how i can fix it. And going into a windows VM just to be able to configure basic functionality of my peripherals is a tedious workaround at best, not a solution.

[Radium_Angel]

5 hours ago, Gimmick21 said:

You have to create a distro, that everyone likes, so the fragmentation is removed automatically because everyone wants to contribute.

https://xkcd.com/927/

3 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

The main thing keeping me away from Linux is not Linux, but the people around it.

It's been that way since...well..forever honestly. It was designed for programmers and tinkerers by programmers and tinkerers, Joe Average need not apply. The elitist mindset will never go away. Remember "Lindows"? They caught flack from both sides. MS for obvious reasons, but all the *nix hardcore for even suggesting that Linux be made easy to use. Perish the thought.

 

[Sho2048]

1 hour ago, Stahlmann said:

What i talked about is that on Linux when you encounter a problem you face people trying to defend Linux itself, like you are right now instead of just helping the user having the problem.

 

Yes, Windows has better software support because it's more popular. But just because i acknowledge that fact that doesn't mean the problem isn't still there on Linux.

 

As an end-user i don't care who is to blame. If a problem or incompatibility is there i want to know how i can fix it. And going into a windows VM just to be able to configure basic functionality of my peripherals is a tedious workaround at best, not a solution.

So what you're saying is "fuck you if you don't solve my problem", and you're surprised that people isn't too kind to you. There is a problem, you've been told why there is a problem and why it's hard to fix, and yet you whine and moan how much badly have you been treated by users. 

 

Gee I wonder why we're having troubles with finding people wanting to mantain software considering that users are being such little bitches.

 

Btw, blame not Linux users for my unkindness to you. I am a developer, therefore I hate users with the passion of a thousand burning stars. (And there is an even deeper hell for users who are not paying but only complaining.)

[Stahlmann]

1 minute ago, Sho2048 said:

So what you're saying is "fuck you if you don't solve my problem"

Where did i ever say that? Don't put words in my mouth.

 

But the Linux community puts in more time to try and blame the user than actually helping. And from what it seems i'm not the only person that noticed that. These 2 videos brought up a lot of discussion that also confirmed a lot of it.

 

Just another real world example people maybe can relate to: I quit my last job because the people there were basically just blame shifting as soon as a problem is identified. That's not the way to move forward with issues, but a way to move in circles. In this case: "Because it isn't Linux's fault, why should Linux fix it." So the next person runs into the same problem because it wasn't fixed after the last incident. And after that the circle just goes on and the problem will essentially never be fixed.

 

I have no problem accepting or admitting that i made a mistake, but when i'm looking for help after that i don't need people talking about who's fault it is, i need information on how to move forward and solve the issue.

[Sho2048]

6 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

Where did i ever say that? Don't put words in my mouth.

 

But the Linux community puts in more time to try and blame the user than actually helping. And from what it seems i'm not the only person that noticed that. These 2 videos brought up a lot of discussion that also confirmed a lot of it.

 

Just another real world example people maybe can relate to: I quit my last job because the people there were basically just blame shifting as soon as a problem is identified. That's not the way to move forward with issues, but a way to move in circles. In this case: "Because it isn't Linux's fault, why should Linux fix it." So the next person runs into the same problem because it wasn't fixed after the last incident. And after that the circle just goes on and the problem will essentially never be fixed.

 

I have no problem accepting or admitting that i made a mistake, but when i'm looking for help after that i don't need people talking about who's fault it is, i need information on how to move forward and solve the issue.

Great. Come help us out instead of just standing there and complain. All FOSS software is not a given. It’s not a product the same way that a park or a bridge are not products. Developers aren’t there to provide you a product but share their work and passion with the community and it should be respected instead of constantly slid the mud at like this community has been doing for weeks. Stop wanting and giving back only insults.

[tikker]

I'm going to try and argue this from a perspective why certain elements will need to change if the Linux community wants more wide-scale adoption. Mind you, I use Fedora every day for work, and have done my share of programming and sysadmin-related tasks. The community will have to change certain things instead of pushing people towards how it "should be done". Otherwise it's just your mom trying to convince you eating veggies is good while insisting their gross overcooked mushy brussels sprouts are the best/intended way to eat those veggies.

 

The one thing that continuously returns is "once you know the basic syntax". Well that is the problem. I don't want to have to remember the syntax or parameters. My favourite example is Bulk Rename Utility. Sure, the command line can do that easily with some regex and sed, but I just want "replace X with Y" text fields and a big "rename" button. I won't have to remember sed, rename, regex etc. I can just fire up the program, hit the relevant buttons that explain on the label what they do and be on my merry way. GUIs have a very valid place. Even as someone who generally prefers doing stuff on the command line, I like the GUI for network settings, for example. Yes I could look up what files I need to change, what commands I need etc. but I simply don't care. A handful of button clicks and my password is changed. Not everybody needs or wants to be tech literate to this level.

 

5 hours ago, cursed_ethernet said:

1. Stop using GUIs for setup/installation/configuration, the command line is your friend!

 - GUI package managers suck and often don't output any sort of useful error message when something goes wrong. On top of that, package managers and AUR helpers like pacman, yay or paru have really intuitive interfaces that are often faster     and easier to use than the GUI once you know the basic syntax.

If the GUI-based package managers sucks, then that should be an argument and incentive to improve the GUI-based package managers, not to push people to the command line.

5 hours ago, cursed_ethernet said:

2. Treat your distro kind of like a separate OS, Arch is vastly different from something like Ubuntu and will often have completely different core systems even if they share the same kernel.

Agreed. Furthermore, beginners should not be pointed towards distros like Arch or other rolling release distros. They should start with a stable one that is aimed at maximum compatability, such as Ubuntu or (in my experience) Fedora.

5 hours ago, cursed_ethernet said:

3. Try using the -git version of a package when searching the AUR, this will clone the very latest version from the repository and build it from source automagically!

-  When using the "yay" aur helper, simply typing "yay <search>" will search the aur directly in your terminal.

This is a huge risk and package managers exist for this reason. Latest does not always mean stable. Building things from source can be a pain for those that want to do it already, let alone an everyday user. If I hit "install package X" the last thing I would want is a crash because of some obscure CMake or GCC error for a dependency or version that my system doesn't have.

5 hours ago, cursed_ethernet said:

4. The attached screenshot shows how to download a single file from GitHub, simple click on the file to open it in the viewer then right click the "Raw" button and select "Save link as". If you're downloading the whole repository, it's easier to just open a terminal and run "git clone <URL>.git", this downloads it as a git repository and allows you to update, switch versions and do all kinds of cool things without even opening your internet browser.

How does downloading a single file from GitHub matter here? GitHub itself will already deter the majority. The other part you lose by telling them to open a terminal, having to paste some obscure command in there to get their software, and making them do additional obscure stuff when updating their software. Git is nice and all, but again everyday people just software to check for updates itself or a "Check for updates" button as the most "technical" approach.

[Kilrah]

15 minutes ago, Sho2048 said:

Great. Come help us out instead of just standing there and complain. 

15 minutes ago, Sho2048 said:

Stop wanting and giving back only insults.

That's only the next problem attitude, 99% of people you say that to do not have the skills to do that (and the problem with that problem is that learning is often not even an option since someone trying to learn and doing things wrong is often rebutted even harder when they try to submit their thing or get help with it), so in the end saying this is just like saying FU, don't expect anything else than people being annoyed after that - but they weren't the ones initiating it, you were. Even people who have figured out using, configuring linux etc which shows them being more knowledgeable/technical might still know nothing about how to actually design and code what's behind. 

 

Some developers are genuinely trying to make things a better experience and be inclusive of normal users, but the type who says that clearly isn't and just wishes normal users would disappear - and the fact there seems to be more of the latter type (or at least they make themselves known more/are more vocal, unsurprisingly) is the whole point of the "linux isn't user-friendly" trope.  

 

40 minutes ago, Sho2048 said:

Gee I wonder why we're having troubles with finding people wanting to mantain software considering that users are being such little bitches.

I'd rather say the opposite, as an occasional dev what would put me off there is seeing I would have to work with someone I would not want to deal with the attitude of, not the users. 

[Stahlmann]

1 minute ago, Sho2048 said:

Great. Come help us out instead of just standing there and complain. All FOSS software is not a given. It’s not a product the same way that a park or a bridge are not products. Developers aren’t there to provide you a product but share their work and passion with the community and it should be respected instead of constantly slid the mud at like this community has been doing for weeks. Stop pretending and giving back only insults.

In what way am i insulting you? I'm talking about my view of how all this went down so far, occationally throwing in some of my own experience, albeit not about Linux. If you feel insulted from just that then that's on you. I don't think i have to apologize for that.

[Sho2048]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

That's only the next problem attitude, 99% of people you say that to do not have the skills to do that (and the problem with that problem is that learning is often not even an option since someone trying to learn and doing things wrong is often rebutted even harder when they try to submit their thing or get help with it), so in the end saying this is just like saying FU, don't expect anything else than people being annoyed after that - but they weren't the ones initiating it, you were. Even people who have figured out using, configuring linux etc which shows them being more knowledgeable/technical might still know nothing about how to actually design and code what's behind. 

 

Some developers are genuinely trying to make things a better experience and be inclusive of normal users, but the type who says that clearly isn't and just wishes normal users would disappear - and the fact there seems to be more of the latter type (or at least they make themselves known more/are more vocal, unsurprisingly) is the whole point of the "linux isn't user-friendly" trope.  

 

I'd rather say the opposite, as an occasional dev what would put me off there is seeing I would have to work with someone I would not want to deal with the attitude of, not the users. 

Anyone has the skill to write their own experience without turning it into a rant against developers, the community, other users. Something that is clearly not happening here, as people keep talking like they've been scamming out of their money. They haven't.

 

Most FOSS developers have absolutely trash experiences with users who spend all their day saying "this is bad", "this is worse", "this does not work, fix", "when will you fix this?", "why don't you support my user case?". You probably don't see them because you're an occasional dev. This is the life of any developer in both FOSS and closed source. At least they pay me for 99% of my code so I don't complain. Almost 2 thirds think about quitting from time to time. Most of the world relies on Linux and plenty of software that runs on it, and projects get abandoned every day. Yet some people in this thread claimed that they should find something else to do if they don't want to maintain it. 

 

Surprised that devs is not really all that sympathetic? This entire thread is just one big "oh Linux users hurt me, oh Linux is a product and they should come beg me to use it, oh I should not really have to think about it", and any time one says anything at all, people just go "see? you piece of shit elitist, how dare you explain the problem, you're the problem, you suck".

 

So much for discussing!

49 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

In what way am i insulting you? I'm talking about my view of how all this went down so far, occationally throwing in some of my own experience, albeit not about Linux. If you feel insulted from just that then that's on you. I don't think i have to apologize for that.

Of course this is a very much retorical you, but yeah, when you say:

 

As an end-user i don't care who is to blame.

 

You're exactly doing the worst thing any user can do. And this is offensive to me as developer.

 

Blame others and never take into account the context, the feelings of others and the sheer frustration of doing ungrateful work for you. 

 

And this blaming attitude is what drives people away from doing work for the community. The community that runs basically the entire web. So many projects that are just one or two people on which everything hangs.

 

 

Everyone loves to talk about UX and products and market share and all, no one talks about the amount of value that FOSS brings to humanity. 

And I still don't get how Linux can fix marketshare. Please explain to me? I don't get how magically Linux can go back in time and stop Microsoft from bundling DOS and Windows with everything. 

 

1 hour ago, Stahlmann said:

Just another real world example people maybe can relate to: I quit my last job because the people there were basically just blame shifting as soon as a problem is identified. That's not the way to move forward with issues, but a way to move in circles. In this case: "Because it isn't Linux's fault, why should Linux fix it." So the next person runs into the same problem because it wasn't fixed after the last incident. And after that the circle just goes on and the problem will essentially never be fixed.

 

WE CAN'T FIX LINUX MARKET SHARE.

[Stahlmann]

12 minutes ago, Sho2048 said:

WE CAN'T FIX LINUX MARKET SHARE.

Market share will grow if it's compelling enough. But because of the issues i mentioned in my previous posts it's just not compelling enough. If you want people to switch from Windows to learn Linux, you'll not get them to switch by achieving feature parity. You need to offer something on top to make it worth their while to learn a new OS. Many people already said that you cannot expect Linux to behave like Windows. That means it will take some learning and time. Sadly I cannot say what would make it so compelling. Maybe for some people the fact they're not feeding Microsoft any data is enough, but for me it certainly isnt't.

[Stahlmann]

 

26 minutes ago, Sho2048 said:

Of course this is a very much retorical you, but yeah, when you say:

 

As an end-user i don't care who is to blame.

 

You're exactly doing the worst thing any user can do. And this is offensive to me as developer.

 

Blame others and never take into account the context, the feelings of others and the sheer frustration of doing ungrateful work for you. 

So i said "i don't care who is to blame" and you interpret it as "blaming others"? I don't really understand where you're getting that from.

[Tan3l6]

Yeah, it's your fault, Steve

[Sho2048]

29 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

Market share will grow if it's compelling enough. But because of the issues i mentioned in my previous posts it's just not compelling enough. If you want people to switch from Windows to learn Linux, you'll not get them to switch by achieving feature parity. You need to offer something on top to make it worth their while to learn a new OS. Many people already said that you cannot expect Linux to behave like Windows. That means it will take some learning and time. Sadly I cannot say what would make it so compelling. Maybe for some people the fact they're not feeding Microsoft any data is enough, but for me it certainly isnt't.

Linux is not a commercial product, and so aren't most distros people use, most of the software people use and even most of what runs the web (and that value has been exploited greatly by companies btw). It does not answer to commercial reasons such as "make it compelling for others". It is shaped by the people behind each and every project, not a bunch of managers, marketing departments, ux teams and all.

 

No one is offering anything. Take it as it is, contribute, be kind and grateful.

 

I don't even use it if not as a tool over Windows and OS X myself. So it's not like I disagree that it is not for everyone, or that it's always the best. But that will not change any time soon, and we're better off this way, because diversity is what makes Linux amazing and what has driven so much of the success of it outside of PCs. Plenty here want Linux to be one monolyth that has support for anything, but that can only happen if we turn the community into a monarchy or oligarchy. That's not happening any day. No one will force developers to stop working on their own passion projects just because you decided their effort is useless and having one more desktop environment is bad. Maybe we can have some commercial product based on Linux shine (like Android), and that's the extent of it. SteamOS will succeed (if it will) as SteamOS, not Linux.

 

There are a number of distros making Linux more accessible to people and we can cheerish that. Consider those a "product" or a "service"? I guess. But at large, you can't turn the entirety of Linux into Windows, the commercial product with an appeal to the average Joe, because that is not the point of Linux, and that is not gate keeping, or elitism, that is just the reality of a project born and created not to appeal to the average Joe but to contribute and be contributed to by those who are passionate about, about choice and diversity and sharing. You can't approach what is essentially "the Wikipedia of operating systems" by asking that everyone writes articles they way you want, or only write those articles that interest you, or stop making changes and arguing. And calling it "Wikipedia-like" is even wrong because Wikipedia has rules and a central organization, "Linux" is a thousand softwares and libraries and projects that are bound to no one including users. 

 

By the way, Linux has a bunch of advantages for the common people anyway? It is currently a lot safer, faster, lighter and more reliable than Windows will ever be, and it will not try to screw you up in mysterious ways as only closed stuff can do (and you can fix it yourself. Make Linus and Luis Rossman proud); you can install it on old hardware and keep it alive for a longer time, and a lot of stuff LTT showcased rely on it. Some claim it can be faster at videogames too because of less layers between userland and metal. It's not perfect but it's also not entirely useless.

24 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

 

So i said "i don't care who is to blame" and you interpret it as "blaming others"? I don't really understand where you're getting that from.

You said yourself that you think that people is throwing at you the blame, but you blame Linux, the abstract concept. So don't be surprised if people who is passionate about FOSS is not happy.

[Kilrah]

1 hour ago, Sho2048 said:

Most FOSS developers have absolutely trash experiences with users who spend all their day saying "this is bad", "this is worse", "this does not work, fix", "when will you fix this?", "why don't you support my user case?". You probably don't see them because you're an occasional dev. This is the life of any developer in both FOSS and closed source. At least they pay me for 99% of my code so I don't complain. Almost 2 thirds think about quitting from time to time. Most of the world relies on Linux and plenty of software that runs on it, and projects get abandoned every day. Yet some people in this thread claimed that they should find something else to do if they don't want to maintain it. 

1 hour ago, Sho2048 said:

Blame others and never take into account the context, the feelings of others and the sheer frustration of doing ungrateful work for you. 

Your feelings are your feelings. If they're bad then yes, move on, just like if you're in a job you hate. If what you were doing was important someone else will pick it up anyway.

If the work feels ungrateful that's the whole problem. I know people who work on obscure behind the scenes stuff nobody sees yet they still feel proud of it and can get gratification from being behind the foundation nobody knows they need... If you don't and see only negatives then do leave, it will be better both for you and the project.

 

But what I've seen most is that the dev's attitude is the key to both other developers supporting and users being nicer about their communication and more thankful in general. 

Been working for several years on a project that I joined and contributed to precisely because of the maintainer's positive attitude, i.e. he took user feedback not as complaints but as useful input to do something better, which is how it should be... of course there will always be "that stupid guy", but you can always have a good laugh about it and promptly ignore it.

Seen the other end too once he was hired by a company to work on something similar but closed source, he was still the maintainer so things had to go through him, but he had no time for it anymore so stuff would linger for weeks preventing others from doing much useful work, we were only 2 left, we began seeing user issues as annoying because that would mean having to do things and doing things was becoming a pain, nobody else showing interest in joining the project etc likely due to that attitude and the thing becoming stale because of it, it's a vicious circle. But as mentioned that's simply the sign it's time to move on.

And would you know it, another team forked the project with an enthusiastic attitude, they put "life" back into the whole thing building a welcoming community both for users and devs again like we did back in 2013, and they've now got more people contributing than we had in the past few years... And that's the whole goal of FOSS, (almost) nobody can work on the same thing forever, the point is that it won't be lost when you get tired of it. Gotta be humble enough to realise it though.

[dilpickle]

Its been 20 years now that I've been hearing about Linux *almost* being ready for normal people. Its never going to happen.

 

And I don't know why everyone feels they need to "challenge" themselves to use Linux. Use whatever works for you.

[Stahlmann]

1 hour ago, Sho2048 said:

Linux is not a commercial product, and so aren't most distros people use, most of the software people use and even most of what runs the web (and that value has been exploited greatly by companies btw). It does not answer to commercial reasons such as "make it compelling for others". It is shaped by the people behind each and every project, not a bunch of managers, marketing departments, ux teams and all.

 

No one is offering anything. Take it as it is, contribute, be kind and grateful.

 

I don't even use it if not as a tool over Windows and OS X myself. So it's not like I disagree that it is not for everyone, or that it's always the best. But that will not change any time soon, and we're better off this way, because diversity is what makes Linux amazing and what has driven so much of the success of it outside of PCs. Plenty here want Linux to be one monolyth that has support for anything, but that can only happen if we turn the community into a monarchy or oligarchy. That's not happening any day. No one will force developers to stop working on their own passion projects just because you decided their effort is useless and having one more desktop environment is bad. Maybe we can have some commercial product based on Linux shine (like Android), and that's the extent of it. SteamOS will succeed (if it will) as SteamOS, not Linux.

 

There are a number of distros making Linux more accessible to people and we can cheerish that. Consider those a "product" or a "service"? I guess. But at large, you can't turn the entirety of Linux into Windows, the commercial product with an appeal to the average Joe, because that is not the point of Linux, and that is not gate keeping, or elitism, that is just the reality of a project born and created not to appeal to the average Joe but to contribute and be contributed to by those who are passionate about, about choice and diversity and sharing. You can't approach what is essentially "the Wikipedia of operating systems" by asking that everyone writes articles they way you want, or only write those articles that interest you, or stop making changes and arguing. And calling it "Wikipedia-like" is even wrong because Wikipedia has rules and a central organization, "Linux" is a thousand softwares and libraries and projects that are bound to no one including users. 

 

By the way, Linux has a bunch of advantages for the common people anyway? It is currently a lot safer, faster, lighter and more reliable than Windows will ever be, and it will not try to screw you up in mysterious ways as only closed stuff can do (and you can fix it yourself. Make Linus and Luis Rossman proud); you can install it on old hardware and keep it alive for a longer time, and a lot of stuff LTT showcased rely on it. Some claim it can be faster at videogames too because of less layers between userland and metal. It's not perfect but it's also not entirely useless.

You said yourself that you think that people is throwing at you the blame, but you blame Linux, the abstract concept. So don't be surprised if people who is passionate about FOSS is not happy.

I never said Linux has no use. I know of usecases where Linux makes sense, even more so than Windows or MacOS. But my discussion with you here is about Linux as a windows replacement for the "average Joe gamer", which is the topic surrounding these videos and forum threads.

[igormp]

3 hours ago, tikker said:

if the Linux community wants more wide-scale adoption.

(the following "yous" are not specific to you as a person, but rather people jumping into that linux usability argument)

I want to address that "if" in there: in my personal opinion, as a daily linux user who uses it for both work and free time, I don't see why there should be more wide-scale adoption.

In its current status, most distroes still lack in usability or functions that people are used in other OSes, and such users aren't usually open to learning new ways of doing something, which requires someone to adapt/create those functions.

However, most devs aren't really focused on such end users, but rather their own needs, so that's why you often see stuff that's really targeted at the specific "programmer" audience rather than something that does good for your regular user.

 

I personally wouldn't recommend linux to any regular user, windows, chromeos and macos are out there and do good for such use cases, unless you're a developer with some specific needs there's no reason to go with something where you need to go out of your way to get things working (unless you want to try it for some ideological reason, then you should learn and get used to the "workarounds" for what's considered basic stuff in other systems).

 

It may sound a bit gatekeep-y, and in fact it is, don't waste your time trying something that you are well aware won't fit your workflow unless you're willing to actually fix those issues by  yourself or do it the way someone else (as in, devs for the tools you're using) decided for you.

 

2 minutes ago, dilpickle said:

Its been 20 years now that I've been hearing about Linux *almost* being ready for normal people. Its never going to happen.

And why should it happen? I don't get why people insist with that idea.