My dead dad could use it and he was a moron.

I really was not prepared for that sentence 😅

My thoughts were more about the article itself than it being posted here. Being an article it could really easily be something that comes up when someone is trying to figure out whether they can make the switch and are doing their research on pros and cons

I think personally I also just really don’t enjoy snarky in-group humor, it feels like it often just fosters resentment for those outside of the ingroup. So I do kinda have a bias in general

I’m really glad it seems like my thoughts have been appreciated, I was kinda mentally preparing myself for people to be unhappy with me

I find this kind of stuff frustrating enough I needed to edit my first version of the comment cause it was angrier, but I want people to actually hear me out and think about the culture we cultivate in the foss space. It really matters.

There are so many issues people care about (eg. Software freedom) specifically because we want a world that is kinder to people, and then we act on that value or interest in a way that isn’t kind to people. A little empathy goes a looong way

Thank you for the kind words, I hope you have a lovely day :)

As a long time linux user, antagonizing people who are unsure if the switch is right for them is very clearly a poor interpersonal choice that will not result in the change we wanna see in the world, or more people adopting linux

Fuckin seriously, we can do better than this circle jerk. As someone who cares deeply about software being kinder to people it pains me enormously how much of a dump stat interpersonal skills are for so much of the Foss community

If the authors wanna pat themselves for linux they can do it without creating a unempathetic, condescending, preachy culture that alienates people.

Just call the article “things we love about having switched to linux” so it finds the right audience and its fine, but this shit sucks and its exactly the kind of crap that has made so many of my friends resistant to hearing what I think is good and special about Foss software. They hear me out anyway, but I’d love for it to not be a fucking uphill battle because Foss people routinely emulate the same preachy, condescending, unempathetic interpersonal apprach that everyone bemoans about the worst vegan spaces online

I’m gonna second the reccomendation to just boot it from a flash drive and try it out. Virtualization takes a ton of performance and on lots of hardware isn’t going to be a nice experience compared to actually running it without virtualization

You don’t have to make the switch, but it’ll give you a much better sense of what you might like, without dealing with lag and input delay :)

For one of my friends its just cause she has a shitload going on and enough problems to deal with without trying to figure out a new way for her computer to work and whatnot

Plus I think art stuff she uses doesn’t support linux and she found krita unsuitable for how she likes to work

Objectively hilarious.

As more of an art and design person than a technical one, yeah almost undoubtedly, though I can’t think of specific examples

But I really appreciate the work that goes into a beautiful logo, typography, or UI, and that will often sway me, probably more than it should

Void’s beautiful logo/logotype is what originally got me interested in it as a distro, and the only reason I’m not using it now is cause I’m a dummy and minimal distros require I use my brain a lot more than I’ve thus far been willing to get my computer up and going

Thats a shame to hear. Is jitsi better?

I think if I remember right it was to use portals to grant file access to the themes folder and then set flags or variables or something to force using the theme you wanted

If you’re interested in experimenting with that route I believe I also saw details for that method in various online tutorials for theming flatpacks

Thanks! ☺️

Weirdly I think my preferred theme used to not advise doing it that way, but it seems they have updated their recommendations so now I have two new approaches to try

I’d love if someone had a good answer here, I’ve really struggled to get my flatpak apps to all look nice and unified

I hope y’all are able to find a good solution on linux! If not it might be worth seeing if you could open some bug reports, it might help them make the experience better

I have no idea how to do that kind of thing for big multi package projects like a distro though lol 😅

Wishing yall the best, take care! ❤️

I understand what you mean, but I dont think that’s particularly helpful advice. He may have a limited ability to understand what she needs from her os as a dual language user, and as a non technical user she may not either in a way that’s helpful to him in trying to understand the options and setup process in front of him. A less technical user may not be able to communicate how or why something isn’t working the way they need, and he has no context or experience from which to infer.

From a user experience standpoint, him being the person who understands linux and is more technical but having no familiarity with her use case is really difficult user situation, should the distro not support their needs particularly well out of the box.

It seems entirely appropriate for him to be asking around on her behalf about what might best fit her use case, given he doesn’t have experience with it.

For general users, updates changing things is pretty much never an issue, which is why typical end users always use the word “stable” to convey it’s more colloquial meaning of “not going to break on me”, rather than the technical definition sys admins use it to describe.

If arch didn’t have breaking changes I don’t think users would ever really mind it being rolling release, which is how you get the term “stable rolling release” for rolling distros that hold updates for long enough to generally prevent breakage, like void or tumbleweed

To the original commenter’s point, as a more design and ux person I think being able to do unattended upgrades and not get any errors or stuff you have to fix is kinda important. Which is why I find it a tad irksome when technical folks act like everyone and their grandma should run arch cause it’s never given them issues. It is awesome that it sounds like it’s improved so much though!

Maybe I’ll try arch some time and see if I’ve progressed enough to not find managing my system a bit more bothersome

How often are you supposed to check the blog?

Edit: probably every time you’re about to do an update, sorry I’m sleepy lol

My impression was always that the biggest issue is needing to pay attention to, and sometimes intervene in updates, is that not a thing with arch anymore?

Pop is such a cool project but it’s been kinda broken for me both times I’ve tried it, and then add to that what happened with Linus tech tips where him being dumb combined with pop having not fixed a major and obvious packaging issue that completely broke his system has kinda just left me with the impression they’re not super on top of the ball

I hope that’s changed, I want them to be successful, especially with cosmic

If you’re picking a distro for someone else I would not recommend a small project distro or something incredibly niche 😅

Any of the big projects should be decent. Fedora, maybe fedora silverblue or whatever their imutable variant is called, opensuse, Mint, Ubuntu, debian. (Personally I don’t like some of the choices Ubuntu makes but it may still be a very good option for less technical folks)

Others can tell you which of those have the best security defaults, but to be honest it doesn’t sound like you actually have particularly exceptional security needs relative to what any distro will provide. I’d prioritize something stable and user friendly- which, again, your best bet is NOT picking a niche small project or something most people have never heard of

I think it’s unfair to say that’s the point of the rule on a foss project’s discussion forum

Political discourse online gets really fucking toxic really quickly 😅 often driven by entirely legitimate anger and hurt over the state of the world, but we can’t just pretend it’s all an evil conspiracy by big Ubuntu to silence us.

Folks on the internet consistently demonstrate through behaviour why “no politics” is almost always a rule anywhere where folks might perceive it to be off topic, whether one thinks it’s the correct ruling or not (it’s entirely valid to feel it should be allowed even though it brings out the worst in people, though I’m sure that would put incredible strain on moderators given the internet baseline of interpersonal compassion)

And the places online where folks do discuss it? Can quickly get extremely unpleasant, or develop an inescapable undercurrent of hostility that starts to permeate all other interactions on the platform.

Personally I think actually productive political conversation is almost always emotionally laborious, and it’s important to be able to step away from the political aspects of things and catch your breath, even though everything is political. But everything being political doesn’t mean it’s healthy for every conversation to be political, that’s a recipe for burnout and people acting like their worst selves, which is counter productive to pretty much any meaningful political goal.