If you recognized yourself in a few of these points, that doesn’t mean Linux isn’t for you. In fact, you can count it as an invitation. It just means you’ve spent a long time in an ecosystem that treats you more like a product than a participant.
  1. You love giving your data away
  2. You enjoy being tracked by your operating system
  3. You’re happy when your computer tells you “no”
  4. You prefer someone else deciding what you can run
  5. You feel uncomfortable if you get to have options
  6. You’d rather battle corporate tech support
  7. You’d rather rent your software than own it
  8. You think ads belong on your desktop
  9. You love being lied to about what’s “industry standard”
  10. You like rebooting for every little update
  11. You’re uncomfortable when software is transparent
  12. You think community-made tools can’t be “professional”
  13. You want intrusive AI everywhere, whether it helps or not
  14. You think the command line is only for hackers
  15. You never really wanted your computer to be yours anyway
  • onlooker ( onlooker@lemmy.ml ) 
    23·
    11 months ago

    And here I was, thinking this was a well thought out article with actual, legitimate reasons why someone wouldn’t want to use Linux. Instead, it’s this smug, autofellating, condescending bullshit. Roland Taylor has some issues.

    • faythofdragons ( faythofdragons@slrpnk.net ) English
      3·
      11 months ago

      I mean, #6 is accurate for me. I don’t have a humiliation fetish, so I’d rather pay people to tell me what I’m doing wrong instead of braving the barrage of belittlement that comes from asking for crowdsourced support.

      • onlooker ( onlooker@lemmy.ml ) 
        2·
        11 months ago

        And that’s completely valid and fair. Different strokes for different folks, as they say. But I do have to stress that I’m not so much criticising the bullet points as I am the general tone of the article. #6 should read like your reply, but instead it feels like the reader should feel bad for not wanting support from humans as opposed to an automated system.

        • faythofdragons ( faythofdragons@slrpnk.net ) English
          3·
          11 months ago

          Oh, I understand. I was trying to snarkily imply that the smug, autofellating, condescending attitude you mentioned was unfortunately endemic, to the point where it’s starting to feel like some people are secretly jorking it while telling newbs they suck. I think it’s a huge reason why people feel like FOSS isn’t for them.

  • Hemingways_Shotgun ( Adderbox76@lemmy.ca ) English
    10·
    11 months ago

    Oh shit! That’s what we were missing all along! That’s what has, all this time, been keeping adoption down and preventing the year of the linux desktop! A condescending prick talking down to people! We should have figured this out a long time ago! Thanks OP for setting us straight! Now our numbers are sure to skyrocket!

  • Endymion_Mallorn ( Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org ) 
    6·
    11 months ago

    Here’s a few more.

    1. You want to use multiple monitors without messing around.

    2. You don’t want to run an emulator for your games.

    3. You like being able to share software with people.

    4. You need corporate software for work or your own business.

    5. You’re looking for a computer that ‘just works’.

        • Melmi ( melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English
          7·
          11 months ago

          Wine literally stands for “WINE Is Not an Emulator”.

          That said, Proton is pretty transparent, you can just install any game off Steam right now and it’ll work 9 times out of 10 without you noticing that you’re using wine. I often can’t tell if I’m using proton or not and get surprised when I go into the game files for one reason or another expecting proton and am surprised to find a native Linux build. There has even been at least one time I’ve switched from a native Linux build to Proton because it ran better, and it was just one toggle.

          Why the resistance to wine? Did you have an issue while using it, or is it the principle of using a compatibility layer?

        • Starski ( Starski@lemmy.zip ) 
          1·
          11 months ago

          Idk, I have multiple monitors on mint and it works just fine, even when I had three monitors connected it was easy to do pretty much anything in the settings, and anything else was just a simple xrandr command.

    • Daniel Quinn ( danielquinn@lemmy.ca ) English
      1·
      11 months ago

      16: I’ve had more headaches getting multiple monitors to work in Windows than I ever have in Linux. Try connecting 2 monitors of wildly different resolutions in Windows and witness the abject failure of windows to handle that elegantly. Your mouse can slip off into a “void” where no monitor exists, and yet your content can just disappear to, dragging the mouse between monitors slips the cursor way off and to the right, screenshots are a mess, etc. etc.

      17: I only play games in Linux and I never use emulators… unless it’s for things like SNES.

      18: I don’t know what you’re getting at with this one. Software is way more shareable in Linux. You just say “it’s in your package manager” or “install this Flatpak”. Windows and Mac on the other hand have half-assed app stores and a culture of "just go to ${URL} and click “download, ok, ok, ok” which inevitably leads to stuff breaking and no discernible way to determine what failed 'cause your machine is full of rando installations.

      19: This is fair, though most high-profile stuff like CrowdStrike works for Linux now.

      20: I cannot begin to tell you how much Windows and Mac don’t work. Like, at all. Just today I spent an hour on a call with another developer stuck in Windows trying to get a JDBC driver to work. The constant ambiguous error messages, useless documentation directing you to "just go to ${RANDOM_SITE} and install some-cryptically-named-executable.msi that craps out with error messages about missing runtimes… the whole operating system is hot garbage and that’s before you factor in the missing keyboard shortcuts, flaky monitor support, creeping AI, and ads shooting into your eyeballs. The only way Windows “Just Works™” is if you redefine “works” entirely.

      • Endymion_Mallorn ( Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org ) 
        1·
        11 months ago

        For #18, here’s how my sneakernet software sharing goes: Windows: I copy the installer exe, or a zipped version of the software as installed to a flash drive. The person can then run the software from the drive, or copy it to their own PC. No Internet required, no outside connection called for.

        Linux: after determining that they have the right distro type for the software, I have to walk them through either getting it from a GUI repository client, apt, pacman, flatpak, snap, or whatever other cockamamie thing it’s on. They have to install it from the central authority - which is not sharing the software. It’s suggesting that someone else connect to the Internet and download a thing.

        If it requires the Internet to for a typical user to share software on media, your operating system is hostile to freedom.

        • Melmi ( melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English
          2·
          11 months ago

          If you want to share software like that, just use AppImage. It’s perfect for sneakernet software sharing: no internet access required, and it requires less technical knowledge from end users than telling them to use a package manager. Just copy the file and run it.

  • FoundFootFootage78 ( Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml ) English
    6·
    11 months ago
    1. You can’t be trusted with keeping your desktop secure (because Linux sure as hell won’t do that for you).
    2. You need software that can’t run on Linux even via compatibility tools (Multiplayer AAA games don’t count).
    3. You have access to extended security updates for Windows 10.
  • boredsquirrel (he) ( boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net ) 
    3·
    11 months ago

    Cool and all but stop the rebooting hate

    1. I just installed some random drivers, I guess without rebooting. Windows is intransparent af, but I think this was the case.
    2. Reboots are very important and should be done with updates. Atomic systems make sense!