It’s not always wanting to stick to what they know. I have a few programs I hate and every time I have to use them I try to find a better alternative. Unfortunately, none of the other programs I tried had the functionality I needed to use them.
Because the reason companies are brazen enough to pull the crap that they do is because most people have viewpoints along the lines of this post. Reddit for example has almost certainly performed a cost-benefit analysis and wouldn’t have locked down their API like they did if they suspected an actual risk of enough people switching to Lemmy and other alternatives where the lost revenue would have been significant. And they were right, the vast majority of Reddit users tangentially looked at Lemmy and similar alternatives but are still on Reddit. The people actually here on Lemmy saying they’ll never use Reddit again are a tiny minority of Reddit’s total userbase.
I’m genuinely surprised that a creator who has a ton of op-eds in his videos and constantly pushes for electrification and heat pumps citing their lower environmental impact, which is very correct and noble of him mind you, doesn’t apply the same logic to software.
Also, obviously it’s not good to be a dick when promoting FLOSS as you’re more likely to push people away from it, if that was his point then I’d tend to agree (admittedly I’ve been guilty of that before). Maybe that’s what he meant, but he doesn’t mention that in the post and seems to imply that even a friendly or matter of fact suggestion that a FLOSS alternative is available is unacceptable. Like are you complaining just to complain or are you complaining because you want suggestions on how to solve the problem? I don’t know what his experience with FLOSS discourse is, but I’ve personally complained about a proprietary software, had someone point out that an alternative exists, and immediately tried it out and often end up switching. Literally the other day, I was complaining about the Unix cp command, someone suggested I use rsync instead because “it’s better”, and what do you know they were right.
Exactly! I actually talked back and forth with him a bit and eventually said that "complaining about a missing FOSS feature is like complaining to the volunteer ladeler at a soup kitchen about the lack of a gluten-free option. It's just not the path to getting the change you want."
In the end he seemed to get what I was saying, but was still irritated. I've been really learning lately how hard it is for some people not to see themselves as customers in FOSS land.
I’ve been really learning lately how hard it is for some people not to see themselves as customers in FOSS land.
It perplexes me, because when people get free stuff that isn’t FOSS, they have no place to complain. Their only option is to pay for the software, but most don’t. As soon as they see a place they can complain, they go twitter on the place.
The draw feature is actually only available if installed via FDroid so far, because FDroid contains pre releases. They plan to release it everywhere this month.
He’s still being a dick about this?? Thought he’d chilled out a bit but now he’s lost all damn sense about the matter. Maybe he’s at least gotten past insulting all Linux users in his videos and will be keeping this crap to a somewhat more appropriate environment.
I and a few other people kinda chatted with him a while and the reality kinda seemed to click with him? He was very stuck on "it is a product and I am the customer" mindset that is very ingrained into so many people. He said filing a bug report felt "dehumanizing" and we tried to illustrate that it can actually feel empowering if you view yourself as a collaborator, not a customer. I think he's coming around.
At least I hope he is because (opinion on FOSS aside) he really is one of the all-time best creators on YouTube right now.
He’s just a guy making videos on the internet. He speaks with a lot of authority on subjects and doesn’t provide any credentials to support his claims. And there’s no bigger example of that then when he made a whole video on why the Tesla connector was terrible and anti-consumer, but when it was adopted as the industry standard less than one year later (iirc) he couldn’t praise it enough.
He doesn’t actually know what he’s talking about and I’m very skeptical of his opinions.
Yeah, the dishwasher video was cool, and yes I use pre-wash now (I’m not sure it’s made any difference tbh). But when it comes to making fundamental changes to my life or society I don’t really want to hear what this guy has to say.
It’s like someone hearing someone complaining about a slum lord and pointing them to a company that gives out free parcels of land with free trailers on them. It’s not usually, like, a mansion, but it’ll do.
You could be tied to a specific piece of shit you don’t like because it’s what your job requires you to use.
I had to work with Salesforce and when I’d complain about it, Id be given all sorts of alternatives. These are nice but… The dude in charge of what the rest of us had to use liked Salesforce, so we all suffered.
"Hey so my free car that was built and maintained entirely by volunteers who received no financial compensation and was provided to me no strings attached is making a weird noise and I don't want to learn how to fix it myself nor am I willing to wait for someone else to fix it, nor am I willing to even tell the car-builders it has a problem."
In this context suggesting they complainer pay for a car doesn't sound so crazy?
“hey, this car I bought for a couple grand is being fucky”
“nah man fuck buying a car. Leave that one in the ditch out back, and start driving this one my buddies made and have been fixing for years. Yeah it breaks a lot but hey it’s free. Oh you wanna keep using your old car, you just need an oil change? Bitch, what did I say? Use mine.”
Oh yeah btw, that new car, gas and brake are reversed. Nonono it’s ok just get used to it or you’re a dumbass
No, not at all. More like, if your car is broken you could also ride a bike, or walk, or take a bus or a cab or a train or an airplane. Sometimes it’s helpful to have solutions presented that you didn’t even think of. Like how you assumed that the only way to deal with a broken car is to fix it or buy a new one. That’s not true at all, and I’m here to help you explore all the ways to solve your problem, not just the ones at the top of your mind at the moment.
@morrowind funny to find this here when I wrote my reply just a while ago:
"It's like talking to someone who is in a crappy apartment as though they have the agency and skills to stake out a plot of land and build their own home."
Maybe if you're suggesting them to install Linux From Scratch, then yes, it is.
If you're suggesting them them to install any of the many very simple (and very usable OOTB) distros like Fedora, then it's not.
In that case it's like the house is free, already built and furnitured, and right next to their own; but they have to move their personal belongings from one house to the other and learn a different room layout.
Sure, they still have the right to complain about how their landlord treats them like crap. But they sound pretty damn stupid if they do so while having an available free house right next door, and refusing to move because they don't want to learn a new room layout.
It’s somewhere in between, you’re not building your own software, but oss software does usually tend to need more work. It’s like telling someone with a shitty landlord to move to a new house which they get to own, but it has no paint, or lighting, or flooring and they have to move their furniture and learn a different layout
Or even, just move to my building that has a much better landlord, but it’s a 5 storey walkup.
Some folks will be able to use that no issue, some folks might bitch but be happy in the end, and for some folks it’d be a nigh impossibility to do so.
And all of that, provided the house they have to be in, is within their control.
And If it doesn’t require more work, it requires different work. The beast you know is easier and more comfortable to understand than the beast you don’t know, even if it would be more beneficial to learn to deal with the newcomer.
Isn’t the point that you don’t have a choice to just buy a house, because there are obstacles that prevent it. In the same way, I don’t have a choice to use Linux or whatever other foss alternative to the stuff I use daily because my laptop is owned by the company I work for and their policies dictate that it runs windows etc.
And don’t forget, plenty of popular software isn’t even compatible. Meaning you got to use alternative software that doesn’t always do what you want it to do.
So buy a new couch, cause that one isn’t getting in.
Is proprietary software any easier than that though? Don’t you have to put in much more time removing all the spyware and bloat they put in and then spend all your time perpetually fighting against forced updates and applications being installed without your permission?
Whereas with Fedora my experience is more or less install it and forget it.
The “it’s easier” argument for proprietary software I think died at least 15 years ago.
Or could it be that it might bother them but they just keep quiet and put up with it, assume that it’s part of owning a computer and feel powerless to change anything?
Is proprietary software any easier than that though?
Yes, take nvidia drivers for example, on windows I just download the installer and run it and done.
Last time I tried to move to Linux desktop (attempted Fedora and then EndeavourOS) about a year ago, none of that worked properly. Installing drivers was not in any way straightforward, needing CLI commands and google, where every guide I found seemed to have a different method used to install them, I kept getting outdated ones, and I had no idea what I was doing.
At the end of all that I still didn’t have HW acceleration in my browsers, my desktop had screen tearing, gsync didn’t work properly in windowed apps, the GPU wouldn’t downclock fully at idle like it’s supposed to, I couldn’t figure out how to get shadowplay working, and so on.
And yes I do know this is technically mostly nvidia’s fault for not having as good quality of drivers on linux. But as an end user all I care about is that my stuff works properly without googling things, needing the CLI, and spending a lot of time on it.
Don’t you have to put in much more time removing all the spyware and bloat they put in and then spend all your time perpetually fighting against forced updates and applications being installed without your permission?
Definitely not, I don’t really spend much time at all. I haven’t experienced forced updates, my apps just update through winget manually when I want to. There are a few extra apps I don’t need on windows but those take a minute to remove, I can’t say I’ve ever experienced an app being installed without my permission other than edge I guess, but that replaces IE for embedded browser stuff so it’s kind of needed.
Most of my ‘admin’ time is spent on the opensource apps I use, generally on my self hosted stuff. But also just on basic things like backup software, Veeam is my primary backup which is basically a 1 minute set up with a few clicks through the GUI, but I’ve been trying out Restic too which requires writing my own scripts to handle backups, more scripts to handle pruning and such, manually installing them as services so they run properly, and writing my own notification system on top of that just to get an email if something goes wrong.
Opensource is great, but it’s usually extremely time intensive to get the same results, with lots of documentation, google, and just wasted time trying to figure out the basics.
Yep, got the same experience as you. Not with nvidia drivers bit my huawei laptop had a broken audio driver where only half of the speakers worked… Unless you plugges in a headphone… Then the headphone and the other half of the speakers worked… All in all, it took me at least a da to get that working
Also, still no fingerprint support…
You can do a lot with opensource and tailor it to your need, but you have to invest a lot of time… And that’s what a lot of people don’t have
Admittedly I do have the bias of experience which could blind me to the difficulties, when I phrased my first two sentences as questions they were genuine questions. Between work and personal life I must’ve installed Linux in some form at least 200 times over the last 20 years, so I’m not most users.
I’ve also not used Windows in many years, the last I think was when I had to use Windows 7 for work about 10 years ago and I found it extremely difficult to get it to do what I want. If it’s improved then it’s improved.
On the other hand a novice user can ask somebody to install Linux for them, what about that? That’s what my non-techy parents have done, and it’s easier for them to use Linux (they say so) and easier for me to provide technical support for them.
Yes we do get sort of blind to what the average non-tech person wants out of their computer, I certainly have plenty of Linux experience on servers, but that just doesn’t seem to translate across to being able to easily troubleshoot desktop Linux issues. I think because a server is a ‘set up once’ type thing, whereas running linux on my desktop feels like a constant battle with installing programs, and driver updates or new versions of a game breaking things.
IMO windows has vastly improved since W7. I can’t even remember the last time I had to troubleshoot a game or program not working properly. I have W11 on 3 PCs and it’s been extremely stable, almost every program other than games is installed via the winget package manager which also handles updates, and it doesn’t get that ‘windows slows down over time’ feeling that used to happen on 7, vista, etc… Obviously there’s some bloat to remove when you first install it, and a few annoying settings to change, but that’s not that big of a deal to me and I spend just as much time on a fresh linux install getting things how I want them.
As far as the GPU choice, right now nvidia just makes a better GPU IMO, with their DLSS and frame-gen that AMD so far can’t compete with. Shadowplay also works a lot more reliably than ReLive in my experience. I briefly had an RX 6700XT for a few weeks before returning it due to driver/software issues.
I spend enough time fixing IT things at work and on my selfhosted server stuff, I just want to get home, hit the power button on my PC and play some games or work on some code for a project without anything getting in the way.
With 0 experience with linux i installed nobara without any problems. I didnt need to install anything else(edit: excluding the software you can install in the “welcome” app), to change something in the settings etc
The only “hard” thing i had to do was to disable secure boot in the BIOS
I think you are talking about the situation that might be true 15 years ago, vut right now you’ll be hardpressed to find anything that doesn’t work out of the box on any modern distribution. I don’t know what plugins and dependancies don’t work on your machine, but I assure you it’s not a universal experience, far from it.
Also, most of the software that you use on Linux is free, so you don’t “buy” new couch if your old is built specifically for your old house, you learn to sit on any of the new ones that you can get for free at any moment
I say this over and over again, but I’m going to say it again. I disagree firmly with the second point because there is such a lead and usability and ease of use for popular commercial software such as Microsoft office and Adobe software. It’s available in so many languages, it has so much functionality, and yes, both surpass FOSS solutions by a wide margin in functionality.
If you don’t need Excel, I think Linux and libre office might work fine for a lot of people, but there are still gaps in usability and accessibility. I don’t really see the same for anything Adobe does in the Linux space however.
Linux is like 90% of the way there, but these are people with jobs and families and shit. You can’t expect them to spend time having to overextend themselves with technology.
I wasn’t saying that we have everything available for Linux. Not yet, anyway. I was saying that whatever we have there is usually free and very customisable.
People committing from Windows and especially Mac infrastructure think that since they spent hundreds of dollars on software they use, they will have to do that again if they will swith to Linux. For a lot of people the thought of free software just never crossing the mind
DraugerOS wouldnt even boot from the thumb drive for me. Garuda sort of worked, the live boot was damn near perfect, from a stability and basic performance perspective, but after a basic install there were some annoying artifacts like a block behind the cursor on some windows, steams store page would flash rapidly and performance was trash in any game even on low settings. A Logitech mouse scroll wheel was hit or miss working. I mean like you spin the wheel and while the wheel was free spinning the browser would start and stop responding to it. 8 hours of messing with kernels, drivers, and settings it I threw in the towel. Not worth the effort to just get it to run normally let alone
Arch was similarly poor performance. Mint was also poor performance. Im not a fan of the PopOS style, but it actually ran great on my machine so, I’ll take it.
Point being, I tried 4 different distros before finding one that worked mostly well out of box.
Where the fuck have you found whatever weird esoteric distribs you are talking about, and why on earth did you went with those? Depending on the answer to the question, I kind of understand how you managed to make Arch “perform poorly” whatever that means in that regard, you need to have at least basic understanding to use Arch (or treat it as an opportunity to learn).
But you don’t start your experiments with something from third page of Google, at that point you’re an alpha tester.
Google best gaming Linux distros. DraugerOS, Garuda, and popos are all prominent distros focused on gaming.
DraugerOS is Ubuntu LTS based.
Mint, not gaming focused, has been around for ages and is Ubuntu based. I’ve used it previously on older hardware with no issue. Just apparently doesn’t like newer hardware.
Garuda is arch based, probably why it was such a pain.
Popos is Ubuntu based as well.
I’ve also tried KDE plasma, ubuntu based, and man was that slow as hell. Works great on some hardware not on the hardware I tried.
I’ve installed Ubuntu in the past and had WiFi driver issues.
You mentioned any modern distros should work out of the box. The only one listed that mostly worked out of the box with semi reasonable performance was popos.
if someone is looking to install a distros to play games, theyll probably google “Linux for gaming” install one of the prominent distros listed above geared toward gaming then bang their head against the wall and quit.
We may understand arch is a full time job, but when Joe from sales builds a new gaming rig and took someone’s advice to install Linux and save money he doesn’t know all Linux distros are not created equally. Maybe he gets garuda or draugeros and bangs his head against the wall then goes back to windows.
There are a million different distros and yes some of the major ones work fine, but not always and if you run into issues it can be exponentially harder to fix the issue especially if you have no IT experience. Making it even worse is toxicity in forums or other support places where people treat you like you should know better because they have of knowledge of Linux and forget that we all have different levels of experience, many people have no experience.
20 years ago I had a lot of problems. These days I’m good to go on first boot. I even installed Fedora on my SO’s old laptop and my parents’ old PC and they never have any problems either.
foss
Hot
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.