Linux

It's nice to get some idea of how many people are switching over, it seems to have had an uptick recently, 3 people I know in real life have tried using Linux as their daily driver in the past few months who hadn't previously

The F Windows posts are great and can be very therapeutic. But guaranteed those users haven’t issued a command that accidentally wipes out their entire drive accidentally. Or they haven’t had their Window Manager just up and decide it doesn’t feel like working anymore because of an update.

I work with Linux a lot simply because of my 3D printers and I love it. But being on a community driven edge can be a nightmare sometimes when something updates and you’ve got to track down the problem. For me that’s half the fun since I usually get to help someone else out with the same issue.

I like to hear other peoples experiences

Responding with a meta level tangent comment, but I can't help feeling that when I read these type of comments that it's just Microsoft astroturfing, trying to shape the narrative away from migration to Linux.

Especially when you see those "I still can't get my favorite single game that uses anti-cheat tech or strange peripheral to work with Linux, so Linux sucks for all gaming" posts.

Just kind of seems like there's this stealthy narrative warfare going on.

I really like them, along with all the other repetitive types of posts people make. For people who have been using Linux awhile, or have been a part of this community (or any Linux community really) they get a bit old, sure, but each new post is an opportunity for other new Linux users to learn and contribute.

I think sequestering discussion like this into nicely planned neat boxes like sticky threads or weekly discussions is harmful in the long term. While it may keep the posts in this community "clean" I believe it will reduce interest and turn away fresh blood.

I think those of us who have been using Linux awhile should embrace these posts and view them as opportunities to mentor, and as opportunities to continue to stoke the fires of interest in Linux.

Can't have linux without a hint of elitism.

"Im much better than all my other friends who are still using Windows ... yuck"

I really don't get why anyone would be annoyed about this specifically when recurring topics and posts are just pretty common.. about litterally anything. I find it even more weird since it's about people ditching windows (I mean how many topics and posts hating on windows, praising Linux, suggesting Linux, and whatever else...just lots and lots, and somehow people are fine with that, so why would it be any different here ?)

Beside, people just want to share things, regardless if others did exactly the same an hour or a decade ago. Why care when it's just so easy to move on to something you'd be more interested in ?

One thing I do find tiresome more than anything within the Linux community though is talks about noobs like they are some cringe childs being boring and acting childishly...everyone have been noobs seriously, even you mentioned toxicity and the lack of openness/friendliness towards noobs if we ostracized them..yet you are suggesting it anyway. I get noobs aren't always fun but come on ! And about newcommer posts...noobs will seek help wherever they can seek it, having another place to help them is not going to change that, so we might just as well help them and redirect them to helping sites anyway.

I find them mildly annoying, but generally tune them out.

The offensive responses, are much worse. Linux users can VERY much be a "boys club" and treat newcomers as lower life forms.

I don't mind them. If this type of social media had existed when I first installed Linux 24 years ago, I would have probably done the same thing.

I don't really mind either way whether these posts are allowed to remain or should be culled.

If you keep them around, they will just keep shitting up the feed. The overall browsing quality of the community goes down, hindering the user experience. I don't think it's uncontroversial to say these posts have next to no value; they're essentially equivalent to birthday notifications or "I voted" stickers. Like... congrats! You and everyone else! Now what? Where's the discussion here?

On the other hand, I do want to think thrice about controlling this with moderation. All too often on Reddit I've see the trope of a sub that appears to be crawling, and you get the idea to join in with an enthusiastic post, only to get removedsmacked by automod because you posted this on the wrong day of the week, or this post type is outright banned because the community is sick of seeing it. It's sensible, yes. But ugh, what a demoralizing filter for newcomers. Overly curated subs/communities are not public forums, they are increasingly impenetrable cliques. That may not necessarily be a bad thing if we think the tradeoff is worth it. But we have to keep in mind what we become when we make that trade.

The one thing I will say willl absolutely not help anything at all is making a designated containment community for this specific kind of post. The whole complaint here is rooted in there being no discussion value for these types of posts. You think a community comprised entirely of those would be a community anyone would want to post in? It'd largely be the Lemmy equivalent of a donotreply@ email address. A dumping ground where unwanted posts go to die. And I don't know about anyone else, but somehow I find being directed to a designated dead-end forum by mods is an even bigger slap to the face than simply having my post removed.

Maybe we can just fire up a new community specifically for that - /c/linuxevangelists or /c/linuxplunge /c/linuxswitch or something conceptually similar, and then direct posts of that nature to that community.

Don’t get me wrong, I like seeing more people get into it, but I’ve always thought of /c/linux and adjacent/similar communities as community technical support, so I just tend to ignore or hide “wooo I switched to linux” posts.

I don't remember seeing a single one, so they're probably not annoying me.

Exaggerated complaint posts about non problems there are way to many, though.

I'm working on phasing out windows in my office as much as I can entirely because of the end of win10 and the dumb requirements of windows 11. I'm still running it on my main home PC though because I'm insanely busy and like to game for like 5-10 hours a week and and want to spend zero hours getting games to run. If I buy a game on steam and it doesn't work I instantly I refund it even if I could probably figure it out.

Idk, I try to be there to cheer on people that make the switch and post about it.

I get that the same type of thread several times a week is annoying. However, sometimes I think there is stuff to learn/remember about people switching over now, since there are things I would have long forgotten/gotten used to since initially switching 8-ish years ago, the new user experience is valuable and important to get feedback to help more people transition better.

No

Post better content to the community that is more interesting. The problem isn't these posts, it's the lack of other engaging discussions.

I deleted windows btw, and I'm very happy about it.

Most of those posts are fake too, just karma farming.

Yeah. I deleted windows, too.

3+ years ago and I didn't make a post about it.

There's a huge middle ground between constant reposts about the same topic and hostility to new users. Megathreads have often been the solution to that particular problem. I don't know if Lemmy has a merge functionality, though. It seems like the mod tools are kind of limited.

I feel like limiting or discouraging them would really hurt adoption.

Many times people share their use cases.

If someone with similar use cases finds out "wait, it us possible for me yo use Linux?" they could become tomorrow's post.

Not at all. You seem to think there's a more appropriate forum for people to join the Linux community, and introduces. Where is that? And how do new Linux users find it? Knowing nothing about Linux distros, where should they ask about distros? Distrowatch catalogs 274 distributions - how do newbies navigate those?

I do think having a "which distro" stickie or sidebar would be handy, but I don't at all mind the "I ditched Windows" posts. It beats random venting, ranting, and flame wars.

It doesn’t help much if there are the same threads every day, with people circlejerking on hating Windows and recommending Mint a hundred times, just like 100 people before did on the same thread.

I hate Windows too, but it feels like we’re identifying and comparing ourselves with the bitter ex-partner we had a while ago. No, not being Windows shouldn’t be the main reason Linux is great.

We should focus on what makes our software great, and not what the “bad ex-partner” did wrong.

I completely agree with you and said many times that while I don't like the fact that Windows isn't open-source it does provide a LOT of value for a LOT of people who work on certain fields and haver certain software requirements. With Windows there's a lot of commercial support when it comes to Linux desktop it simply isn’t there.

If you require “professional” software such as MS Office, Adobe Apps, Autodesk, NI Circuit Design and whatnot Linux isn’t a viable options. The alternatives wont cut it if you require serious collaboration… virtualization, emulation (wine) may work but won’t be nice. Going for Linux kinda adds the same pains of going macOS but 10x. Once you open the virtualization door your productivity suffers greatly, your CPU/RAM requirements are higher and suddenly you’ve to deal with issues in two operating systems instead of just one. And… let’s face it, nothing with GPU acceleration will ever run decently unless big companies start fixing things - GPU passthroughs and getting video back into the main system are a pain and add delays.

To make things worse the Linux desktop development ecosystem is essentially non existent. The success of Windows and macOS is the fact that they provide solid and stable APIs and development tools that “make it easy” to develop for those platforms and Linux is very bad at that. The major pieces of Linux are constantly and ever changing requiring large and frequent re-works of apps. There aren’t distribution “sponsored” IDEs (like Visual Studio or Xcode), userland API documentation, frameworks etc.

I guess a sticky post titled « ditching windows, looking to find my way on Linux » would help and new posts about doing that should be forbidden in the community rules/redirected to the sticky post 😇

But it’s also important to welcome properly newcomers.

I will install Windows and remove it again just to annoy you.

For me I'd rather people post something over nothing even if it's the same post to us it's clearly something the poster felt was important to them.

No I don't mind them. I am a linux noob myself and these kinds of posts are what helped me decide to switch.

While we're complaining, you know what I don't like? Completely incomprehensible posts about some super specific subsystem. "fdplq updated to 0.5.pi.007.69!" Wow, that will change my life the next time I boot up my computer to read some Lemmy and play a game for an hour or two.

But they are all part of the linux community. I'm not gonna say the way I use linux is any better or worse than anyone else.

And fortunately, nobody is forcing us to click on those posts we don't care about.

maybe a different structure could work where main linux community is for noobs and we have some kind of seasoned linux community

I like seeing the posts of people finding comfort with their new linux installs even tho they might appear a couple of times.

Linux is still considered a niche so the most likelihood of the newer folk appearing is higher then the more experienced ones. Also I wasn't always experienced and if it wasn't for newbie friendly content I wouldn't be here helping other people as well.

After all, information doesn't spawn out of thin air, it requires someone to carry and distribute it so that other people become also educated in those ways.

Which is way I find weird finding some people say "people are dumb they should do x, y or z cause its better" but then they don't provide any information and expect others to also know what they already know/have learned recently.

In conclusion, sharing is caring and I don't mind people sharing their experiences which also helps others on the same situation.

It's not only you. I suppose we need a separate community, linux-newbie or something like this, for such posts and questions about choosing a distro.

Nah it's cool.