Feeling down as Linus call me toxic

[whm1974]

9 minutes ago, Dat Guy said:

Most Linux users I meet online or offline behave like kids who just hit puberty, claiming they were 1337 h4x0rz just because they managed to format their "Windoze lol" hard disk with a GUI installer. I wish they wouldn't pretend to care so much about which operating systems other people use. What do they even want to gain - market share? In order to do what? And why?

Which Linux Users? And just like actual Hackers, I really find 1337 h4x0rx Script Kiddies to really annoying.

[D-reaper]

1 hour ago, whm1974 said:

Which Linux Users? And just like actual Hackers, I really find 1337 h4x0rx Script Kiddies to really annoying.

Why do you waste time with people like that then?

[D-reaper]

1 hour ago, Dat Guy said:

Most Linux users I meet online or offline behave like kids who just hit puberty, claiming they were 1337 h4x0rz just because they managed to format their "Windoze lol" hard disk with a GUI installer. I wish they wouldn't pretend to care so much about which operating systems other people use. What do they even want to gain - market share? In order to do what? And why?

Well, as a Linux user seeing someone complain about their CPU not being supporting (in the case of 11), and they just want to do simple things like web browse and stream, I would suggest Linux myself to use on their older hardware; especially if it could barely run 10. Or if they had enough of Windows (and its own issues) and want to try something different.

[mamamia88]

On 12/4/2021 at 10:57 PM, SnowyRVulpix said:

It is absolutely important to call gatekeeping and elitism out, but you cannot paint an entire community with the same brush. I have no control over the gatekeepers... and I have argued with gatekeepers, as recently as last week infact, 

In said argument, I was actually defending Linus. I believe that what happened with PopOS in the first video was not Linus' fault at all. This person that I was arguing with claimed that it was 100% Linus' fault. He didn't read the warning in the terminal, so it's his fault! When I pointed out that the warning was in te middle of a huge blob of white noise, he tried to argue that it was clear as day (It wasn't), etcetc... and many other gatekeeper arguments. He even took pride in being called a gatekeeper, and didn't want his right to break his system taken away because [Linus] couldn't handle it. 

The thing is that this guy and I are both part of the Linux community... but we're as different as night and day. I want to see more users on the Linux platform. He wants to keep Linux for his own little elite group of computer users.

I think Linus nuking pop os was 95% his fault. As a new linux user one of the very first things you learn is the concept of sudo and permissions. If you spent 5 minutes on pop os and even installed one other application besides steam you would quickly realize usually when you ask to install something it doesn't ask you to remove stuff. And when it does it's not without reason. The gui package manager is just a front end for apt. So when he ran apt in the terminal it spat him the same exact error message as before except in text form. It must have had like "flags" on certain packages that warn you when you attempt to remove them. But, then after the 3rd warning he should have closed the terminal and asked for help. Instead the computer said "i'll do it but, you gotta give me consent so when it fucks up your system you can't blame me". Big red flag. It's like the system was begging him not to do it but, couldn't stop him. When a package like steam is packaged that people are gonna install you would think someone to make sure sudo apt install steam doesn't remove pop desktop and stuff but, even in the worst case scenario it took 3 confirmations to do it. Then 3 videos later he's complaining about the same general idea of "linux should let the user do whatever the hell they want with their computer". And yet he's a walking example of why that concept has to draw a line somewhere. It just comes off like he's making a mountain out of a molehill. He had 3 opportunities to walk out any time yet he proceeded and messed up his system. Now 2 million users think linux sucks because you might accidentally nuke your entire system installing steam. Instead of "linux is great i tried to install steam and it worked great" or "linux is great i tried to mess up my system and it just wouldn't let me." Or "the developers were mean to me when I told them i wanted to destroy their product." Or use the opportunity to educate millions of people to the entire concept of "if your computer warns you about something listen" That should be a tech tip. Don't ignore warnings.

[Dat Guy]

1 hour ago, D-reaper said:

Why do you waste time with people like that then?

 

Not everyone has the required ban privileges.

[SnowyRVulpix]

2 hours ago, Dat Guy said:

What do they even want to gain - market share? In order to do what? And why?

Market share is a valuable thing. Windows is currently better for gaming and hardware support... why? Think about it. Because it's the largest target, and the one that is guaranteed income for developers.

Linux - and MacOS for that matter - are risky for developers, because we and the Apple community have tiny userbases compared to Windows. I want to see my platform grow to the point where publishers like EA, like Ubisoft, like whoever owns Bethesda and ID, like every other publisher... To the point where these companies want to target Linux in addition to Windows, and maybe even Apple's paradise. I want to get it to the point where it is bring the gamer, not the platform.

I also think a genuine threat from a competing platform would force Microsoft to do better, and improve the Windows experience. Right now, Microsoft has no competitors in the operating system space (MacOS doesn't count because it only runs on Apples own expensive hardware). They can do what they want, and be lazy about it *cough*Windows10Updates*cough*. A genuine threat to Windows' market share would drive Microsoft to do better.

And finally, I do love Linux and think that everyone can benefit from it. 

That said, I hate the toxic approach to promoting Linux that many take. It is disgusting behaviour, and doesn't help promote the platform.

37 minutes ago, mamamia88 said:

I think Linus nuking pop os was 95% his fault.

Absolutely not. It was a heavily broken package in the pop repos that caused it, followed by warning messages that weren't clear, and an easy way to bypass those warning messages without even reading them... or understanding them. The average user isn't going to know what anything that was written on that apt screen meant. They just know that something is stopping them from doing the task they want and they'll work around it as quickly as they can.

Linus should have stopped at the gui error from the pop shop, sure but the error was not clear. Pop Shop should have had a much clearer error message.

[Dat Guy]

7 minutes ago, SnowyRVulpix said:

Windows is currently better for gaming and hardware support... why?

 

Because it has exactly one graphics framework which can safely be assumed to be installed.

 

 

[mamamia88]

Just now, SnowyRVulpix said:

Market share is a valuable thing. Windows is currently better for gaming and hardware support... why? Think about it. Because it's the largest target, and the one that is guaranteed income for developers.

Linux - and MacOS for that matter - are risky for developers, because we and the Apple community have tiny userbases compared to Windows. I want to see my platform grow to the point where publishers like EA, like Ubisoft, like whoever owns Bethesda and ID, like every other publisher... To the point where these companies want to target Linux in addition to Windows, and maybe even Apple's paradise. I want to get it to the point where it is bring the gamer, not the platform.

I also think a genuine threat from a competing platform would force Microsoft to do better, and improve the Windows experience. Right now, Microsoft has no competitors in the operating system space (MacOS doesn't count because it only runs on Apples own expensive hardware). They can do what they want, and be lazy about it *cough*Windows10Updates*cough*. A genuine threat to Windows' market share would drive Microsoft to do better.

And finally, I do love Linux and think that everyone can benefit from it. 

That said, I hate the toxic approach to promoting Linux that many take. It is disgusting behaviour, and doesn't help promote the platform.

Absolutely not. It was a heavily broken package in the pop repos that caused it, followed by warning messages that weren't clear, and an easy way to bypass those warning messages without even reading them... or understanding them. The average user isn't going to know what anything that was written on that apt screen meant. They just know that something is stopping them from doing the task they want and they'll work around it as quickly as they can.

Linus should have stopped at the gui error from the pop shop, sure but the error was not clear. Pop Shop should have had a much clearer error message.

I didn't say it was 100%. Not arguing that it was a broken package. OK here's a picture of the bug. Ok looks similar to any sudo apt install transaction.  But, at the very bottom it says in no unclear language. "warning the following essential packages will be removed. This should not be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!.... lists everything that's gonna be removed, tells you how much disc space will be freed up by removing it, To continue type in the prhase 'yes do as I say'." and then he agrees and is shocked when it breaks. I would expect standard user behavior to be to back out and google "why is my computer telling me i need to remove the desktop to install steam?" 

 

[D-reaper]

1 hour ago, Dat Guy said:

 

Not everyone has the required ban privileges.

Or... Just don't respond to them?

[SnowyRVulpix]

2 minutes ago, Dat Guy said:

Because it has exactly one graphics framework which can safely be assumed to be installed.

IMO that's more nitpicking. It's something that Valve and others can work out when and if they need to.

1 minute ago, mamamia88 said:

I didn't say it was 100%.

Take a look at that screenshot for me, but look at it through the eyes of an impatient Linux newbie. As an impatient Linux newbie that just wants to install Steam and get to gaming, you've bypassed the entire screen of white noise and focused on the final line which told you exactly how to install the Steam package.

There are two lines in that there warn of the danger, but they blend in with the rest of the white noise. In my opinion, they should be a light red or medium yellow, to draw attention to them. Maybe even with a warning icon (Can terminal programs do that? I dunno) next to them. And maybe a short, plain english, explanation of what those packages that are being removed represent.

But most importantly, go back a minute or so in the video and look at the error message from Pop Shop.



What does this tell you as a newbie... or even an experienced user? Absolutely nothing. Clicking details just spams you with noise.

[finest feck fips]

7 hours ago, SnowyRVulpix said:

Condescending  isn't gentle teasing.

If people are arguing with you about what the word ‘hidden’ means, it's not condescending to suggest that they don't know what the word ‘hidden’ means. That's how disagreeing about the meanings of words goes, ya know?

Plus if you like at Bryant's content overall, including his reactions to every single Linux challenge video, he's clearly very sympathetic to new users and recognizes 90%+ of Linus and Luke's complaints as relating to legitimate issues. I don't think it's fair or reasonable to call him ‘toxic’ for making the video in question.

 

7 hours ago, maplepants said:

You only checked page 1, and found somebody being hostile and rude. I think that makes my point for me pretty well. There's a reason why Luke talked about being afraid of the Linux community's feedback on WAN Show. 

Reread the paragraph you quoted. The person described as being hostile and rude is very clearly not a part of the Linux community.

 

6 hours ago, whm1974 said:

The third bullet point from the first list, annoys Long Term Linux Users to no end. There are good reasons go and RTFM exist to begin with.

Right, and sometimes the person you're talking to when you haven't RTFM is someone who contributed to the M you won't RTF!

So you're basically asking them to rewrite the manual for you, one post at a time, but also you're too good to take a look at it yourself, first? Incredibly entitled.

That's different from trying to read the manual and finding it unhelpful or too hard to get through. If that's where you're at, that information is important for anyone trying to help you, because it tells them that either the manual needs to be revised or they need better beginner docs do put in front of you or something.

And also that doesn't mean LMGTFY has the ideal tone with which to respond to users who have apparently made zero effort before asking for help. Good technical support forums have rules and guidelines about how to ask for help and how to give help, those rules should include doing some basic diligence w/r/t prior research. Moderators can direct people to those rules or guidelines in a polite way, and if a user repeatedly ignores them they can be banned.

 

6 hours ago, whm1974 said:

The last point of the second list, why would should other OSes be like Windows in the first place to begin with? UNIX came out long before any version of Windows even existed. And Linux more or less follows UNIX conventions as it is suppose to do so.

Yeah. I think sometimes Windows people act as if culturally, everyone's world should revolve around their expectations because Windows has a dominant marketshare on the desktop. But not every community's culture is so centered on the market. There are lots of people who see Windows as an outlier when it comes to behaviors like this because almost no operating systems in existence do things the Windows way, or because they remember thinking the Windows way was outmoded or silly even in the DOS days.

[finest feck fips]

17 minutes ago, SnowyRVulpix said:

Take a look at that screenshot for me, but look at it through the eyes of an impatient Linux newbie. As an impatient Linux newbie that just wants to install Steam and get to gaming, you've bypassed the entire screen of white noise and focused on the final line which told you exactly how to install the Steam package.

And not just a Linux newbie, but a Linux superduperubernoob. We're talking ‘I installed my distro 20 minutes ago’, not even ‘I've been using this for 3 weeks’. If Linus had been using APT for even a few weeks, he would have developed some intuition like ‘huh, when I install things I don't usually have to remove almost a hundred other things’.

 

20 minutes ago, SnowyRVulpix said:

Maybe even with a warning icon (Can terminal programs do that? I dunno)

Yeah, terminal programs can use emoji for that

[mamamia88]

18 minutes ago, SnowyRVulpix said:

IMO that's more nitpicking. It's something that Valve and others can work out when and if they need to.

Take a look at that screenshot for me, but look at it through the eyes of an impatient Linux newbie. As an impatient Linux newbie that just wants to install Steam and get to gaming, you've bypassed the entire screen of white noise and focused on the final line which told you exactly how to install the Steam package.

There are two lines in that there warn of the danger, but they blend in with the rest of the white noise. In my opinion, they should be a light red or medium yellow, to draw attention to them. Maybe even with a warning icon (Can terminal programs do that? I dunno) next to them. And maybe a short, plain english, explanation of what those packages that are being removed represent.

But most importantly, go back a minute or so in the video and look at the error message from Pop Shop.



What does this tell you as a newbie... or even an experienced user? Absolutely nothing. Clicking details just spams you with noise.

It's almost like there's an entire details section that if you expanded it you could have read the exact error message. It probably would have been the exact terminal output listed above. It failed because it didn't want to brick his system and wouldn't allow him to do it. So he opened the terminal and like a bull in a china shop removed everything with no thought. The gui is just a front end to the cli.  It thought to itself "if i install all this stuff like the user wants it's gonna uninstall the entire system" and glitched out. Then he opened the terminal and sudo apt installed steam and over rid the warning and proceeded anyway. 

[mamamia88]

[mamamia88]

14 minutes ago, finest feck fips said:

And not just a Linux newbie, but a Linux superduperubernoob. We're talking ‘I installed my distro 20 minutes ago’, not even ‘I've been using this for 3 weeks’. If Linus had been using APT for even a few weeks, he would have developed some intuition like ‘huh, when I install things I don't usually have to remove almost a hundred other things’.

 

Yeah, terminal programs can use emoji for that

He expanded the details dialog. It had the terminal output can't remove x,y,z (because of pop-desktop). Yada yada yada he goes to the terminal and it tells him "if you install steam we're gonna remove pop-desktop type yes i agree to continue" Basically the gui straight up refused to install steam because it was like "why is this guy who's trying to install steam also trying to remove the entire desktop. That's probably a mistake" and failed before he did any damage to his system. He then went into the terminal and bypassed the failsafe. Like if you work at a nulcear power plant. You're in the gui of an application and for whatever reason it realizes that what you're trying to do has the potential to blow the entire place sky high. But, you still want to do it. So you go to the cli and run the command. But, before it allows you to blow it up it asks for your explicit permission to do so. Like "ok dude if you insist on blowing yourself up i can't stop you.'  

[whm1974]

14 minutes ago, mamamia88 said:

He expanded the details dialog. It had the terminal output can't remove x,y,z (because of pop-desktop). Yada yada yada he goes to the terminal and it tells him "if you install steam we're gonna remove pop-desktop type yes i agree to continue" Basically the gui straight up refused to install steam because it was like "why is this guy who's trying to install steam also trying to remove the entire desktop. That's probably a mistake" and failed before he did any damage to his system. He then went into the terminal and bypassed the failsafe. Like if you work at a nulcear power plant. You're in the gui of an application and for whatever reason it realizes that what you're trying to do has the potential to blow the entire place sky high. But, you still want to do it. So you go to the cli and run the command. But, before it allows you to blow it up it asks for your explicit permission to do so. Like "ok dude if you insist on blowing yourself up i can't stop you.'  

Every new User to Linux has nuke their Install multiply times as part of learning Linux. That considered one of the Rites of Passage....

[mamamia88]

2 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

Every new User to Linux has nuke their Install multiply times as part of learning Linux. That considered one of the Rites of Passage....

Yeah but, not every linux user has 14 million subscribers. People are gonna watch this and think "wow linux must suck look how he broke the system just installing steam". When he's a smart guy who could have read the error message and been like "ok pop os is having a bug right now i can either wait for it to be fixed or try a different distro" part of me thinks it was late at night, he was tired and wanted to go to bed, and didn't have much time sunk into pop os anyway and thought it was worth the entertainment value if it broke. But, you shouldn't just blindly ignore error messages especially when it's not the first time you've received the same message. 

[Kilrah]

5 minutes ago, mamamia88 said:

Yeah but, not every linux user has 14 million subscribers. People are gonna watch this and think "wow linux must suck look how he broke the system just installing steam". When he's a smart guy who could have read the error message and been like "ok pop os is having a bug right now i can either wait for it to be fixed or try a different distro"

Literally nobody is going to think "I'm going to try again later", they wouldn't even think of that being a potential reason. They're following the official way to install Steam, it doesn't work, they Google the error, they find someone saying "use the terminal and force it", and they do that. Exactly what Linus did.

 

It's part of the experience whether it paints bad light or not, it's how it is, and people being able to see that this can occasionally be your experience is the whole point. 

[whm1974]

4 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Literally nobody is going to think "I'm going to try again later", they wouldn't even think of that being a potential reason. They're following the official way to install Steam, it doesn't work, they Google the error, they find someone saying "use the terminal and force it", and they do that. Exactly what Linus did.

 

It's part of the experience whether it paints bad light or not, it's how it is, and people being able to see that this can occasionally be your experience is the whole point. 

To be Honest I already did my homework before choosing which to install. This was during the early 2000's.

[mamamia88]

3 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Literally nobody is going to think "I'm going to try again later", they wouldn't even think of that being a potential reason. They're following the official way to install Steam, it doesn't work, they Google the error, they find someone saying "use the terminal and force it", and they do that. Exactly what Linus did.

 

It's part of the experience whether it paints bad light or not, it's how it is, and people being able to see that this can occasionally be your experience is the whole point. 

I bet if Linus took a screenshot and asked the linux community on reddit, pop os forums etc he would have been told in unequivacal terms that he shouldn't proceed. I understand that the point of the challenge was to diy. But, at the same time troubleshooting problems is part of the experience no matter what os you use. Who knows maybe it would have been patched before the video even released. In fact I'm quite sure it would have been fixed very rapidly. All I was saying is that it's more complicated than it appears at first glance. Sure this shouldn't have happened in the first place. But, I probably wouldn't have done it. I would have been like "why does the computer want me to remove pop-desktop? that sure sounds important" 

[finest feck fips]

20 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

people being able to see that this can occasionally be your experience is the whole point.

Right, and that alone might help some people think

 

> Okay, warnings at a Linux CLI are actually really serious. They're not like the warnings I see on Windows that are just meaningless boilerplate.

If it scares some people away, that's a little bit unfortunate because the kind of thing Linus ran into there was actually very rare. But it's not the end of the world, either, because it's fair for them to do that. Despite whatever improvements this video might finally inspire, until we're not directing users to systemwide package managers for app installation, this kind of thing will always be possible. It's okay for users to see it as a warning.

If they see it and think

> Wow, that's terrible. I'm out.

that's fine.

If they see it and think

> lol that'll never happen to me because I'll actually read the warnings and I'd never do that.

that's fine, too.

[finest feck fips]

5 hours ago, Dat Guy said:

"What was the goal of the Linux community--to replace Windows? One can imagine higher aspirations."

- Bill Joy, one of the fathers of BSD, Java, vi and Sun Microsystems.

The goal of the Linux distro I use is to do things that no *BSD ever did and that Solaris can't do either.

But it would be nice if hardware vendors targeted Linux for first-class support, and it would also be nice if normies could easily avail themselves of a operating system comprised of free software and which does not include any spyware.

 

25 minutes ago, r821e228 said:

Linus did the very right thing, look for the answer for himself first before asking for it -- And what does pop up when you search "cant/ install steam pop os reddit"? 

And that wouldn't have removed his DE, lol. If it had been long enough, running apt update would have cleared away the transient dependency conflict so that installation would just succeed, and if it hadn't, the GUI still wouldn't have allowed him to remove his DE, just like it didn't the first time.

apt update just refreshes the list of available packages. It doesn't install or uninstall anything.

[Dat Guy]

1 minute ago, finest feck fips said:

The goal of the Linux distro I use is to do things that no *BSD ever did and that Solaris can't do either.

Like what?

[linkboy]

31 minutes ago, r821e228 said:

Coping much huh -- The Pop OS Steam mishap probably only affected Pop OS, I don't think that many LTT watchers think Linux is bad, specially when most of them shill so hard for Anthony -- And honestly, expecting to take a screenshot, upload it to some forum/reddit is too much -- Linus did the very right thing, look for the answer for himself first before asking for it -- And what does pop up when you search "cant/ install steam pop os reddit"? 

 

Here's the first link you get when you search in Google "Install Steam pop os"

 

Directly from System76

 

It tells you to install it from Pop! Shop, but as we found out at the time, that was broken.

 

The next step is to use the command line and they don't tell you the sudo apt update command, just to sudo apt install steam after you search for it using sudo apt search steam.

 

I don't know if that's the guide Linus used, but that's directly from the distributor of the OS, and would directly lead the the terminal doing what it did.

[noitcelfeR]

2 hours ago, r821e228 said:

Coping much huh -- The Pop OS Steam mishap probably only affected Pop OS, I don't think that many LTT watchers think Linux is bad, specially when most of them shill so hard for Anthony -- And honestly, expecting to take a screenshot, upload it to some forum/reddit is too much -- Linus did the very right thing, look for the answer for himself first before asking for it -- And what does pop up when you search "cant/ install steam pop os reddit"? 

Linus's experience is not questionable at all. Even in Fedora, my disto of choice, it can be quite confusing for a newcomer to install Steam. There are many paths (dnf, rpm, flatpak, snap, sh) to install steam and I can't even say what the best experience would be. Steam does provide a guide on their website, which should be helpful for newcomers.

 

But this is a far different experience for users used to downloading an installshield or msi package and running it. All of the dependencies in an installation executable in Windows will typically contain the dependencies needed for that application. This is part of the reason why Windows applications are often criticized as being particularly bloated. This is by design, because a vXXX library may not be forward or backward compatible (in fact, it may even be compiled for THAT specific app). Also, all errors are going to the Windows Event Viewer, another GUI, ProgramData, or AppData.

 

In linux, mileage varies. Most package managers will do dependency resolution themselves, which makes packages much smaller than Windows. It also comes at some cost of compatibility, especially if that app is no longer maintained. This can be especially frustrating if the app is proprietary. For example, to install Google Chrome, it typically requires looking up the repository for the distro, adding the new repository to the package manager, and then installing the package using the included distro package manage. This is probably most easily done on the command line, which most novice linux users won't be used to. And, then, there is also a configuration file that probably needs to be changed and, if it is a service, it needs to be started and enabled to run. This is not exactly intuitive. For errors, it varies depending on the error. If is a kernel error, you're probably going to journalctl. If it is an application error, you're probably looking at /var/log or the error output on the terminal. 

 

I think it is fair to say that Windows users are going to have a difficult time on Linux. Also, conversely, Linux users are not going to have a difficult time on Windows. They are fundamentally different.