Yup, I had this in mind as another example of the same thing when I was writing my comment.
When you try to explain that the general jankiness of linux is a big problem and a barrier, you get a lot of people very upset and defensive, but it’s just a simple, obvious fact, and only by facing that fact can anybody actually fix it.
I think the reasons for it are perfectly understandable - software is hard, and anyone able to volunteer could make serious money in so many different places. Capitalist enitities have gobbled up the vast majority of the talent for their own projects, even if they make them spin their wheels in bullshit jobs rather than make good software. The only people left to make FOSS are some combo of ideological, stubborn, and incapable of working within capitalist orgs, or just extremely tired because they already do work in those orgs. That’s not to mention the probably-non-zero number of saboteurs and psyops in the community.
Those people either don’t have the time or don’t have the inclination to spend their precious efforts making features for newbies who can’t just CTRL+ALT+T and start hammering out console commands like a 90s movie hacker.
Now that may not be the fault of honest linux devs who are doing good work, but it is linux’s problem. I don’t know what the solution is, but it’s got to be more than just pretending “linux is easy now” then pivoting to “if you’re not an expert you have no business here” the moment anybody points out how wrong they are. These exact same conversations were happening 15 years ago when I started linux, and the experience is still painfully perverse.
only by facing that fact can anybody actually fix it
The first step to improvement is to acknowledge flaws. We can still admit “This is outside our current capacity to fix.”
pretending “linux is easy now”
This might not always be pretense so much as cognitive bias and a bubble effect: If I look at it from my point of view, it has gotten a lot eas_ier_. I underestimate just how advanced even those things I consider basic are for someone not as versed as I am. I’m nowhere near an expert, but I know enough to have lost sight of the floor.
There are plenty of “fire and forget” distros - If I want to, say, install Ubuntu, I create a bootable flash drive with the base image, reboot, follow the installation prompts, easy.
The layperson will ask “What’s Ubuntu? I thought we’re talkink about Linux?” “What does bootable mean? How do I do that?”
Most crucially, from my own experience trying to sell a family member on Linux, “What do these prompts all mean?” They’re scared of selecting something wrong, because they’re not confident that they understand them correctly.
That may be a public image issue: If you’re predisposed to think it’s complex, the brain may lock itself into not trusting its own understanding of semantics. And the elitists certainly aren’t helping with that: If a hundred people reassure you it’s fine and one person says it’s complex, it’s hard to avoid that seed of doubt. Once it is planted, confirmation bias will do the rest.
I don’t know what the solution is
One part of the solution might be a “transition” package, consisting of first a tool to try cross-platform alternatives to tools people already use, second a ready-made VM to try Linux without installing it, using a transition distro, styled to look and feel “like Windows” and built-in links to the host filesystem, and finally a fully automated installer that includes backing up files, settings etc. and putting them in the equivalent Linux soot after installation so you have as little transitory friction as possible.
Which leads us back to the topic of leftist politics and the split between moderates and progressives: Of course I don’t want to compromise on my principles, but we’re not gonna win people over by demanding drastic change with scary words that make it easy to lump in the “Capitalism fucks us over” progressives with the McCarthyist “They want to install a Russian dictatorship!” rhetorics about the radicals and tankies. Radical change is likely to invite radical backlash.
Our best shot at non-violent and lasting change is to make the transition as low-friction as possible, inching people over policy by policy, shifting the Overton Window the way the regressives have been doing for decades, instead of trying to aggressively shunting it over.
Focus less on identity, ideology and terminology, more on individual issues and solutions. Some movements obviously warrant aggressive countering, but we have to pick our battles, or we’ll be spread out on too many fronts. Ideology alone doesn’t win wars; Strategy does.
We should also project unity of vision and determination instead of public infighting and sabotaging what we all want over the things we disagree on.
Yup, I had this in mind as another example of the same thing when I was writing my comment.
When you try to explain that the general jankiness of linux is a big problem and a barrier, you get a lot of people very upset and defensive, but it’s just a simple, obvious fact, and only by facing that fact can anybody actually fix it.
I think the reasons for it are perfectly understandable - software is hard, and anyone able to volunteer could make serious money in so many different places. Capitalist enitities have gobbled up the vast majority of the talent for their own projects, even if they make them spin their wheels in bullshit jobs rather than make good software. The only people left to make FOSS are some combo of ideological, stubborn, and incapable of working within capitalist orgs, or just extremely tired because they already do work in those orgs. That’s not to mention the probably-non-zero number of saboteurs and psyops in the community.
Those people either don’t have the time or don’t have the inclination to spend their precious efforts making features for newbies who can’t just CTRL+ALT+T and start hammering out console commands like a 90s movie hacker.
Now that may not be the fault of honest linux devs who are doing good work, but it is linux’s problem. I don’t know what the solution is, but it’s got to be more than just pretending “linux is easy now” then pivoting to “if you’re not an expert you have no business here” the moment anybody points out how wrong they are. These exact same conversations were happening 15 years ago when I started linux, and the experience is still painfully perverse.
The first step to improvement is to acknowledge flaws. We can still admit “This is outside our current capacity to fix.”
This might not always be pretense so much as cognitive bias and a bubble effect: If I look at it from my point of view, it has gotten a lot eas_ier_. I underestimate just how advanced even those things I consider basic are for someone not as versed as I am. I’m nowhere near an expert, but I know enough to have lost sight of the floor.
There are plenty of “fire and forget” distros - If I want to, say, install Ubuntu, I create a bootable flash drive with the base image, reboot, follow the installation prompts, easy.
The layperson will ask “What’s Ubuntu? I thought we’re talkink about Linux?” “What does bootable mean? How do I do that?”
Most crucially, from my own experience trying to sell a family member on Linux, “What do these prompts all mean?” They’re scared of selecting something wrong, because they’re not confident that they understand them correctly.
That may be a public image issue: If you’re predisposed to think it’s complex, the brain may lock itself into not trusting its own understanding of semantics. And the elitists certainly aren’t helping with that: If a hundred people reassure you it’s fine and one person says it’s complex, it’s hard to avoid that seed of doubt. Once it is planted, confirmation bias will do the rest.
One part of the solution might be a “transition” package, consisting of first a tool to try cross-platform alternatives to tools people already use, second a ready-made VM to try Linux without installing it, using a transition distro, styled to look and feel “like Windows” and built-in links to the host filesystem, and finally a fully automated installer that includes backing up files, settings etc. and putting them in the equivalent Linux soot after installation so you have as little transitory friction as possible.
Which leads us back to the topic of leftist politics and the split between moderates and progressives: Of course I don’t want to compromise on my principles, but we’re not gonna win people over by demanding drastic change with scary words that make it easy to lump in the “Capitalism fucks us over” progressives with the McCarthyist “They want to install a Russian dictatorship!” rhetorics about the radicals and tankies. Radical change is likely to invite radical backlash.
Our best shot at non-violent and lasting change is to make the transition as low-friction as possible, inching people over policy by policy, shifting the Overton Window the way the regressives have been doing for decades, instead of trying to aggressively shunting it over.
Focus less on identity, ideology and terminology, more on individual issues and solutions. Some movements obviously warrant aggressive countering, but we have to pick our battles, or we’ll be spread out on too many fronts. Ideology alone doesn’t win wars; Strategy does.
We should also project unity of vision and determination instead of public infighting and sabotaging what we all want over the things we disagree on.
Presentation matters.