I’ve been hearing about Linux elitists for the last 20 years, and I have yet to meet one. But what I do see is an endless wave of trolling and bad faith arguments about the supposed complexity of Linux.
They treat a wide array of developers, maintainers and enthusiasts as employees of Linux inc, and now they’re grumpy because their imaginary ticket submitted to a nonexisting helpdesk is not being processed.
I have recieved much more help and support from the Linux community than from any other proprietary software helpdesk.
I’ve been hearing about Linux elitists for the last 20 years, and I have yet to meet one.
Post/browse a help forum, it doesn’t take long to find them
In fairness sometimes users don’t want to hear the truth
YOU SHALL USE tty ON A 4K HDR SCREEN
I use Arch BTW!
I too have never seen this. I see a lot of people claiming they are there but don’t seen to find them. Been doing this a long time.
I’ve seen the exact same assholes in this community. They’ll argue on one hand that it’s not too complicated, then openly push back against any UI improvement because they don’t want more people moving into their niche. Gatekeeping turds.
If you don’t like a particular piece of software move on to something else. It is entirely up to the dev since it is ultimately there project. They owe nothing to you and demanding things does nothing but annoy everyone.
I’m gonna point out the reluctance to improve the user experience to those who complain at the low number of user migrations. Try and stop me.
Example? Why are there always people who can find these unicorns and I never seem to run into them.
Or are you being extreme in calling gatekeeping because they feel they don’t need the GUI, because it just works? Someone argued with me about how a GUI is necessary for everything and frankly it is the slowest way to convey information and the least accurate.
But if YOU want a GUI, welcome to open source, and feel free to implement it.
Point is, I don’t think people are trying to gatekeep, or hold onto their niche, it just doesn’t make sense or scratch their own itch.
I’ve seen it in this very sub. But I’m not gonna hunt down the comments.
You have seen, in this sub, about Linux Memes in your words: “Gatekeeping Turds … who push back on UI improvements because they dont want people moving into their niche.”
Yeah. Right. This is exactly the place you have found a group of people who do not want you to make changes because they are defending… checks notes… the “niche” of open source software.
Yeah, I am thinking this might be a you problem. And I am trying to say this in a nice way: anyone can made that change. Asking someone else to do it may get push back, but that is any software development. Effort vs reward. But to claim the want to hold onto a niche… in open source? Uh… ok.
No worry dude. You don’t have to believe it. Now that you’re gonna be blocked, you won’t even have to see it.
Yeah. Blocked. A thing I have never done in 12 years at reddit or here.
So this person doesn’t want a conversation, and immediately goes to blocked while calling people names.
Yep it is a them problem.
And I always find it so strange, because when did people not be able to disagree? I have disagreed with some on on one topic and then found them in another forum being brilliant about that other thing.
This blocked, I never want to see or talk to you again, is something so new to me.
In the old days I would have just assume they are trolling. I am beginning to wonder if that isn’t their plan afterall.
Linux is so complicated!
Translation:
Linux actually isn’t Windows.
Absolutely this, im all in favor of making Linux more accessible but we dont need to become a Windows clone
luckily people seem to be becoming better with this.
linux is also becoming better at being user friendly.
Arch wiki btw
But I’ve never met anyone like this. Do they exist?
Git gud n00b!
/s, of course.
I’ve come across this kind of response a few times on here and elsewhere, but I think it’s nowhere near as prevalent as it’s sometimes made out to be.
They are literally in this thread here.
The biggest barrier to widespread adoption is the portion of the toxic parts of the general community. You know who they are, you see them all the time. They exist across all distros, and they seem to go out of their way to make the experience as miserable as possible when new users are asking simple questions.
They often are some of the first people new users interact with when needing help transitioning over. They seek out those beginner questions to act superior, and just turn the average user off to the point they decide to never try it again.
Without strong moderation to reduce that dipshit commentary, the Linux community will always be working against mainstream adoption.
Documentation has gotten worse too. Veronica Explains discussed this issue in one of their videos. If you look at some good examples of documentation like the Commodore 64 manual, it explains concepts to an audience unfamiliar with computers in a way that’s easy to understand. Lots of modern software doesn’t have docs like this anymore. Then, on top of that, you have the condescending users in help forums.
Discovered Veronica recently… ❤
The biggest barrier to widespread adoption is the portion of the toxic parts of the general community.
You should be careful with that. Because what exactly are those toxic parts, when deciding upon strategy of fighting against them, might be understood differently.
That’s why most elitists on Linux spaces don’t know WTF they are talking about, but the elitists who deed have been pressed out earlier.
Also I really don’t see any problem with pointing someone to a place in a well-written manual. After answering a few simple questions, of course, and seeing that they don’t understand hints that all this is documented specifically to avoid annoying other people.
What do you mean you don’t like reading documentation to use the basic functions of my OS?
Why would anyone ever want to use a UI or a mouse?
Fuck right off with that, whoever actually made this image. I am fed up with “simplification”, which is actually making everything as dumb and as closed as possible
What an out of touch take
Lol. I am writing this from a phone where I can’t even see entire file system. Fuck those who made this, fuck those who think it is a good thing
Why did you buy an iPhone
I did not, that’s Android
Depending on your device, you can root it and get full system access.
And rooting is such an easy thing to do. Which is also why I wrote my initial comment
Don’t even need root just need to download pretty much any option other than the stock file manager. Amaze, simple, whatever, it’s all better than the garbage google “engineers” made.
That will get you much more for sure, but they were seemingly referring to the entire filesystem, which does require root.
Whatch this, lol
Edit: Sadly the absurdness is the other direction
See other thread
Looks like you need a doctor. Or a linguist. Don’t make inability to read ruin your life
Lol, what? This is suggesting window is simple?
Linux is so much better in this regard.
People don’t see it because they have habits, but once you support both OS’s, windows is full of bizarre quirks and nonsense.
It’s a big abstract to understand, are you trying to say that there are Linux enthusiasts that protest GUIs being made simple and intuitive, and that if they succeed, would-be Linux users will go back to Windows, which is more intuitive?
Maybe for KDE, but just introduce new users to GNOME, that’s perfectly intuitive and even looks great!
Wait what’s wrong with KDE? I’d think a windows user would be more comfortable in KDE than GNOME any day.
idk about others, but for me, KDE feels unpolished. Besides breeze, nearly every theme feels or is unfinished. Now, gnome is also pretty finicky to theme, but in the end i had some pretty uniform and fully featured results which I haven’t been able to replicate on KDE. Also extensions on gnome are pretty neatly implemented. The only downsite do gnome is how stingy they are with Wayland (No server side decorations and other important features)
just introduce new users to GNOME, that’s perfectly intuitive and even looks great!
Gnome 2 sure, modern not so much. I mean when useful features are cut from the GUI it just means it’s harder to actually do things. Like removing “open in terminal” made non-GUI stuff more difficult (esp. w/complicated directory).
I’d say XFCE or Cinnamon or anything else like those are better.
I found gnome so unintuitive that i ended up switching to a different shell to uninstall it because I couldnt figure out how to close that app selection menu thing. (Though maybe I’m just bad at figuring out UX flows that are intuitive for most, seeing how I also despaired as my prof handed me his macbook for my thesis presentation and I didn’t manage to open the file, though tbf there I couldn’t even try to google it and was already nervous)
I’m sure it’s not hard once you know but any UX flow that isn’t already familiar can cause issues like that. Which is why KDE will feel much more friendly to the average windows user since it works the same way for the most part.
Did you follow the tour?
Gnome requires a different way of thinking. It works great for some but if you come from a long Windows/Mac background it probably is to much of a culture shock. It is not for everyone and that’s ok.
Fully guilty of not even knowing there is one. I kinda just poked around installing DEs until I found one I liked.
It’s definitely the windows background for me though, gnome is just entirely different. Not saying it’s bad, but the people we’re trying to convince to switch usually have just as much of a windows (or sometimes mac) background, and often less willingness to learn.
are you trying to say that there are Linux enthusiasts that protest GUIs being made simple and intuitive, and that if they succeed, would-be Linux users will go back to Windows, which is more intuitive?
Not just GUI, but that’s a prime example. A good one would also be the whole debate about warning measures in apt so it doesn’t just happily remove essential system components like xorg. That debate came up after LinusTechTips’ video where Pop!_OS became unusable as he tried to install Steam. Good example as countless people blamed him for “executing commands he didn’t understand”, he as well as System76 were flooded with hate for “making Linux look bad”. Which, well, in that case it absolutely was as there were no safeguards or structures preventing either a wrongly configured package to be published in the repo, nor for the user to not remove essential parts of your system with a command that isn’t specifically about them (
sudo apt install steam). Anyone who’s arguing that more of the Linux software stack should aim to be more stable and accessible usually gets hated on, and people who’re new to Linux but also say they don’t want to get into PCs but just use it and for it to work are getting alienated and in some cases outright attacked.Windows obviously isn’t really more intuitive compared to a fully working Gnome or KDE environment except for people who already know it for decades. That’s not what it’s about in this case though, but people who expect literally everyone to spend weeks and months learning about concepts, commands and structures in their computer that by now is second nature to them but not interesting to many others. It’s xkcd 2501 in a nutshell, but with toxicity sprinkled on top. Common users mostly have to stay in certain corners like the Linux Mint forums to consistently have a good time, and it really sucks.
A good one would also be the whole debate about warning measures in apt so it doesn’t just happily remove essential system components like xorg. That debate came up after LinusTechTips’ video where Pop!_OS became unusable as he tried to install Steam.
Linus had to override a warning message so serious that he had to literally type in “Yes, do as I say!” – including the exclamation point! – in order to force it. Quit your bullshit.
Should’ve been more verbose with that argument.
Yes, there was that single safety measure. Will this single thing with the white text next to hundreds of other rows of white text create sufficient awareness to discourage someone who was 1. told by the internet that “this is the solution!” and 2. has no notion about the severity of this action given they’ve nothing to compare it to except systems (and the web) that constantly cry for attention? Lol no, absolutely not.
There’s a good reason fatal warnings are almost always red or yellow and there are literally pictograms of human skulls in warning signs. People will not understand some white text next to a ton of other white text (that’s utterly incomprehensible to most of them, raising the tendency of people to disregard all of it) paired with something akin to a captcha as the fatal warning it was meant to be. That is not how (a majority of) humans work. The warning as it was back then provided no sufficient safeguards for newcomers, yet gave people sufficient reason to blame them. Although, and that’s the worst part, they have to be applauded for even featuring a warning at all.
The argument that came up afterwards was about exactly this, making the warning adequate and sufficient so even if the information on the internet said they should execute this, people are still being made sufficiently aware so they’re more likely to stop despite feeling that whatever they want might be just around the corner. But of course there’ll always be some people who prefer to call others stupid for their lack of experience or mistakes, especially if they want to protect something from criticism they identify with.
My previous statement was bad, but I stand with the opinion about the whole debate from back then being a good example.
A good one would also be the whole debate about warning measures in apt so it doesn’t just happily remove essential system components like xorg.
Yes, there was that single safety measure.
You are contradicting yourself.
There’s a good reason fatal warnings are almost always red or yellow and there are literally pictograms of human skulls in warning signs.
I mean this is the most respectful way possible… You are looking for a walled garden that protects its users. Linux is not that, never has been, and probably never will be. There are other options like Windows and MacOS that fill that role.
There are some extremely toxic members of the community but your complaint comes from the way Linux runs. If you/they don’t like how it runs then why are you forcing it?
You are contradicting yourself.
I already admitted my previous statement being bad.
You are looking for a walled garden that protects its users.
No, I don’t. There’s a difference between a walled garden and a safe environment, the word itself even says it. Windows, iOS etc. outright build closed boxes you can’t escape. The Linux community rightfully doesn’t like that, but to a degree where we hardly even have proper safety rails next to cliffs and either no or insufficient warning labels next to exposed 11kV powerlines. Yet we expect people who don’t know what they see to not hurt themselves and instead stand still and study books for a few weeks. Even worse, in an attempt to keep answers as universal as possible the correct answers often are that “it’s easy, just hook up X to the 11kV powerline” (equal to editing grub.conf, xorg.conf, or anything else that could literally kill your system or user-essential parts like the graphical interface).
I’m so fed up with the notion that any change that adds safety rails is seen as building walls. Just because you have to add “–no-preserve-root” to delete your root folder you’re not prevented from destroying your OS if you want to (people seriously argued against this change). Improving the apt warning so humans pick it up is not a wall either.
You seem to know a lot. So why not make those changes yourself? If you want bigger flashier warnings then do it. There is nothing stopping you. Depending on your skill you could have had it done in less time than you spent on this meme and thread.
I’m not trying to be argumentative but you sound like you want the linux community to build what you want and disregard their own wants. In addition, you want the community to be extra super nice to you when they do it. The sense of entitlement is astounding.
Whatever you need to tell yourself about people voicing criticism the community culture to shut it down. I’m already contributing to the best of my abilities, so please stop with the “just fix it yourself” nonsense. Not even professionals like Torvalds would have the ability to to all that. Hell, not even companies can; System76 ends up creating a whole new DE because the cultural and structural issues with Gnome were so severe, and they’re working on it for years now (arguably they could’ve moved to KDE, a new DE without old baggage might be a good idea though). Some parts of the Linux community even are so toxic they’re famous for ripping each other apart regularly, like the Kernel devs.
It’s this whole culture and the bad decisions it causes I’m criticizing. And the only way to change anything about such a thing literally is to loudly criticize it, and to introduce new people with new perspectives. Who unfortunately more often than not get alienated by all the toxicity.
I don’t really have social circles that show of Linux elitism. While on public spaces and have the time and energy I try to help out as best I can in a respectful manner and make sure not to get frustrated or annoyed at peoples need to learn things. While I haven’t encountered the elitism myself I can obviously see why it would be extremely off putting to encounter it as a new user and it saddens me a bit to hear about it.
I have a few local friends who wishes to give Linux a go now and decided to hook them up with containerbased systems, in this case since they play video games I chose to give Bazite a go for them specifically for the reason that ruining it with modifying installed packages is going to be harder. I don’t mind helping them out myself however and have found the bazzite community pretty forgiving as well luckily.
Maybe I’ve been using KDE too much, but what’s unintuitive about it?
Maybe unintuitive is the wrong word, but for new users the amount of options can be overwhelming, and the UI looks… not very modern by default, lol
Ok so we went from talking about how intuitive/easy to use it is to how it looks. Looks are much more subjective and also depend greatly on theming even if it’s just using a light or dark theme.
Back to the original question of is it intuitive. For a windows user trying Linux for the first time, most would prefer a DE with a start bar on the bottom by default, some might prefer the look of older versions of windows. (Remember that widows 8 and 11 had/have terrible adoption rates). And others really won’t care much but will just want to be able to quickly find their apps.
I was a windows user for a long time. I only stopped at windows 10 cause I was sock of ads and candy crush soda saga acting like it was a core component of the OS. When I ran windows 8, the first thing I did was install an app that made the start menu look like windows 7. When I first tried gnome I’m 2012 it was so weird. It felt like if apple had made windows 8 with a side dock and a start button that took over the whole screen and these large buttons with a lot of wasted space with long transitions that my computer couldn’t really render.
I switched to XFCE and loved it, thought this was more windows like. It did seem to be lacking some features and didn’t look as modern but it was so much easier to use i liked it more. then I switched to KDE and thought this is what windows wants to be. I also loved all the settings that were configurable and how much control I had over the look.
I still use gnome for work (gnome DE is required) and have KDE on my personal and I got to say how much more productive I am with KDE over gnome.
It’s hard making things simple, it requires research with focus groups, constant testing, firm guidelines based on the results.
They’ve done a lot of that in the middle 90s to middle 00s, when after things moving fast most GUIs were so atrocious it was just necessary. Thus classic Windows versions and classic MacOS (till 9) and Amiga Workbench and even Windows XP are very usable. Even OpenLook and Motif are not so bad.
Today we have a lot of network effects and inability to just drop something we hate to use, thus the market incentive for a similar widespread optimization of GUIs doesn’t form.
So - both KDE and Gnome today are horrible, but Gnome folks are at least trying very hard. I generally like KDE more, but their ergonomics were always overloading me as an ASD person to the degree of being exhausted by 15 minutes of using it.
Gnome is less overloading, but - use of titlebars to show custom controls for every application is good for wow-effect, but bad when you want to expect only one function from titlebar in every application. And the paradigm of Windows taskbar or Motif icons or something else for hidden windows being indicated and immediately accessible is good. If they don’t like taskbars, they could add something like iconbox in TWM or old FVWM or such. And a more Spartan (like usual) application menu.
TLDR, between imitating Apple/touchscreen UIs and ergonomics Gnomers have to make a compromise, or pick one lane. Right now it’s quite irritating when in some place they pick the latter and in some the former.
I think KDE and Gnome are much more user friendly than Mac or Windows. They just work and the UI tends to be fairly consistent and clean. I think this is due to foss and not having to worry about saving money by not fixing things.
Than today’s Mac and Windows - sure. But take w2k or macos 9 - and hell no. Those are much cleaner and more consistent.
Evil or not, w2k is something everyone should thank MS for, it’s really how it should be.
Honestly most modern Linux software is fine.
I personally like gnome but I think the key with gnome is you need to learn the workflow. If it works for a user it feels very natural and clean but if you want something that’s close to Windows or Mac gnome isn’t it.
This whole thread seems to be, primarily, people inventing strawmen and them a comment thread dogpiling them.
We have the “elitist Linux question answerer” and the “average user who is grandmother of 93 years that faints at the sight of terminal text” taking a lot of heat.
Many of stray shots at developers for having the audacity to provide access to the software that they made in their spare time without providing a full UX that compares to IOS.
The “fellow Linux users” who installed Linux 5 years ago, ran into a problem and declared Linux a failed experiment.
The OP isn’t even a good meme. It’s just ragebait.
The people who post these kind of things are not trying to improve the community. They’re concern trolling.
Nobody is “preventing simplification”. Anyone is more than welcome to fire up an IDE, clone a project and simplify whatever they feel like. That’s how the open source software ecosystem works. If you don’t like something then fix it.
You’re not a customer, you’re a community member. Making demands of other people isn’t going to go over well, but it isn’t because people are “elitist”.
What’s something you think could be made easier or just fixed if implemented as a plugin in kde, gnome, or as a software for every other DE?
I don’t think that there is any one issue that hurts the Linux desktop, I think it is more a matter of death by a thousand cuts.
I think for the Linux desktop to be (more) successful we need dedicated QA teams, with a direct connection to usability developers that constantly test and write automated tests for the whole integration on different hardware, and fix any issue as well.
you’re describing opensuse Tumbleweed and its OpenQA suite
Valve doesn’t have much interest besides it working good enough, so we would need either china or EU to fund a group to do that for us
Yes, currently Valve is mostly interesting in a base system that just runs Steam and games, not a general Linux desktop. Commercial Linux distributions are more about servers and professional workstations.
We either need PC hardware manufacturers or public funding to push Linux desktop, since I don’t think that normal users would pay directly for a Linux system.
PC hardware manufacturers however are more about selling the next device that constantly improving a system non-customers could also use for free, so I doubt they would commit to it fully, and instead use it for marketing.
So all that is left is public funding.
This meme just needs a few arrows and ten more text labels and then it’ll really get its point across.
The problem is that the road between creating a piece of software that does something well, and then creating simplification layers on top of it is typically much longer than just “edit a config file” and “here’s a readme”.
You need extra documentation, config gating and workflow, warnings, UI/UX work etc.
I know there are Linux elitists but kind of expecting that much extra work for what is still at it’s core mostly volunteer software seems like it’s own form of elitism.
Absolutely agreed, I find it extremely telling that most people who say that have never personally contributed nor donated. Its ok to have expectations but its not ok to make demands from volunteers, thats why so many devs get burnt out and leave.
The thing is, simple can mean two things, and they are quite often at odds with each other.
It can mean simple to understand, or simple to use.
For example, a piece of software that’s just a binary, a config file and a man page describing the config file and the software’s behavior is generally quite easy to understand. Like, you can fit the idea of the program entirely into your mind and “comprehend” it, though it may not be easy to use for a novice.
By contrast, a piece of software that contains additional layers for easy of use, like a GUI to edit options, may be simple to use, but not necessarily simple to understand. The additional layers add more complexity that does not contribute to core functionality of the program, it can become unclear what gets changed where when you click on buttons, the config file is likely not documented, human readable or editable, or it may even be a completely opaque configuration database (the registry), … So making the software more simple to use, often makes it harder to comprehend.
I, and I think many other nerds, like software that is simple in the “comprehensible” sense, we want to be able to wrap our head around it completely and we don’t mind putting in a little bit of effort to achieve that comprehension, whereas other people prefer to hit the ground running.
