You’ve never met someone IRL who uses Linux? That’s kind of surprising to me. I’ve had a couple coworkers who use it, and I also had some people in college in my classes who used it too.
We’re in a Linux subreddit community so chances are good that someone into Linux would also be more into tech than the average person, and more likely to have a tech related job :P
Yes I’m a web developer and I run Linux as my only OS currently.
Well there is the reason that your coworkers use linux. I can assure you in a normal office job or something like that you will likely not find a person wich uses linux
The previous place I was a sysadmin for was 3 girls in the Linux team (including me) and one guy who was a junior sysadmin and my wife also prefers Linux so I know more girls who use Linux than guys IRL. It’s a different situation online but than again I don’t bother correcting people if they think I’m a guy online.
In all the decades of existing in this rock I don’t think I’ve ever met a girl that was on linux. I just got sad. I mean it’s also pretty difficult to find guys that are on linux anyway, but I know a few at least.
It could be a difference between Europe and the US. Here in Estonia it’s pretty common for women to be in IT. Like the majority of the first level support at my current job are women. Higher tier teams are pretty evenly split too except the Microsoft team, they only have one woman currently.
Could be how tech gets marketed in Europe since I never felt that it was aimed at boys here but I have seen people in the US mention how it’s basically aimed solely at boys.
Well at least some Europe countries are having more equal gender diversity in Germany there were only a few women who studied computer science and even fewer work in it.
That's an Estonia thing, not a Europe thing. Estonia is notorious for being the land of IT. In the rest of Europe, IT is heavily male-dominated. I just finished an IT tech/sysadmin training in France: out of 15 people, 3 were women, and it was probably one of the best ratio they've ever had. It seems there are a bit more women in the programming courses recently, though, but they're still a minority.
At my current job, out of a little over 100 people in various IT teams, 10 are women.
Ah, that explains the time when I worked for a company in Denmark and whenever everyone across Europe got together in the same room it was a massive sausage fest. I always though that was weird.
Yeah, I’m also in europe, so the gap in IT for girls is horrible. In the last decade more and more are seen in the area and that’s amazing, but still much to do. When I was in university a few years ago, the year I entered there was 8 girls in the IT course compared to the hundreds of boys.
On the following year there were like 12 girls in the freshman.
Many years ago when meeting up with friends for drinks, one brought along her classmate/friend from out of town. I already thought she was cute, but then talking about work (as a jr. sysadmin at the time) she talks about her CS classes and that she was into Linux, so this was already “head over heels” territory for very early-twenties dork me.
So I decided to be saucy and asked her, “pico or vi?”
She immediately responded, “pico is for pussies.”
After I replaced my jaw, I did the only logical thing I could think of and proposed to her on the spot. I never saw her again.
Well its in the marketing. Most places that talk about Linux are very guy oriented. The only reason I use Linux was from way back when steam first released steam OS. Then I learned more and more about Linux and now its my primary OS. So women do use it but there is so little information about it in women tech centric content.
Most places that talk about Linux are very guy oriented.
Sorry, I’m having trouble understanding this. Do you just mean that most of the people promoting it are men? Or the way that it’s promoted appeals to men more?
Look up all the people most closely related to the FOSS movement. They’re all male. From Linus himself, to the whole set of FOSS early ideologues like Stallman, all men. Even in his early days, Torvalds was specially more aggressive than usual towards women, despite being rather progressive himself in almost every way. He’s still an asshole today but has gotten better with his misogyny. He is also a bit less edgy and cringe inducing. In the US in particular, women in FOSS is a rather big deal because of how male-centric and misogynistic their tech culture is.
what are some examples of women tech centric content? I’m so entrenched in my own bubble that the only thing I can think of is maybe gaming? but even that winds up pretty male dominated afaik
It’s because the pals and gals who do enjoy Linux projects are deciding if it’s worth the chance of running into a gatekeeping ass, or if they would rather just pick a different, less-“omg ur a girl??” conversation topic.
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