I feel like 75% of Mastodon are people talking about Linux. If you don’t care about Linux you feel alienated. I enjoy Mastodon and Lemmy, but the lack of more diverse subjects gets to me if I browse for too long.
Update: I took your advice and purchased a laptop for Linux, and now I care about it! Problem solved.
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have u tryed like, starting to care about linux?
Honestly, fediverse and my steam deck have me hyped. My next build will be Linux based.
B A S E D
Their username says no.
“Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and saviour Linux Torvalds?”
As someone who considers themselves a tech enthusiast (through broad optics- I don’t work in IT or have a tech based job or even know how to code, and has admittedly never used Linux), I spent an hour today trying to install tor on my Chromebook which supports Linux and finally gave up. Unfortunately for the average user, Linux isn’t even close to user-friendly
Tor is an application and technically doesn’t even has much to do with Linux itself, except that it also runs on it. Where you using a guide for installing and if so which one?
Chrome OS makes installing Linux applications way more difficult than it is on most other Linux distros.
Chrome OS makes installing Linux applications way more difficult than it is on most other Linux distros.
or even tried
Have you “tryed like” not forcing your preferred operating system onto every internet stranger you meet?
There’s a lot of other stuff here too, granted Star Trek is 60% of my feed - but it reminds me of the old internet so I’m content.
What else do you like?
Star Trek, Linux, and a smattering of other memes… that’s all I need!
I can help with 2 out of 3.
Although Lemmy is making me want to get into Linux too…
I definitely read all your memes. Thank you for your service!
Do it it’s tolerable. Yeah I got convinced by you people. But I’d always wanted to be one
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I haven’t seen one. Everyone here seems like an expert already… I already have a PC set aside to do it, so it’s just a matter of taking the plunge one of these days.
Probably start with something noob friendly, like Ubuntu?
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I had heard Debian was also very noob friendly, so I’ll probably go with that then. I don’t really have much of a tech background other than amateur hobby stuff, so I definitely need to pick one that’s going to have a lot of instructional content out there.
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Canonical’s pushing of snaps sucks, but in my experience Ubuntu “just works” on every piece of hardware I throw it at in a way that even Debian sometimes doesn’t. (IDK why, and – having gone through my Gentoo-tweak-everything phase 20 years ago – I can’t be bothered to care.)
Point is, Ubuntu is fine. Just let the noobs use it; don’t put them off with quibbling . It’s fine.
Pop_OS or Mint solves the issues with Snap by cutting it out, I’d recommend other people use those because Snaps introduce many minor frustrations that don’t make sense unless you know what you’re doing and that you’re using snaps.
TL;DR for those who don’t know about snaps, Ubuntu has a thing that makes some apps not work quite right all the time, Pop_OS and Mint don’t have that thing or have a different thing that works better most of the time.
I’m mostly into gaming and tech.
I believe Technology is the top active community.
I feel you on gaming though. I try to be active in niche subs for games I’ve played recently, like Armored Core and Baldur’s Gate. The demographic on Lemmy is no doubt perfect for building up gaming communities - I bet a venn diagram of Lemmings and people who you would find at a con is practically a circle. I think we just need to get some more started.
I bet a venn diagram of Lemmings and people who you would find at a con is practically a circle
None taken
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Just gonna go out on a limb and say most cheap tech projects are probably running on some open source code.
You are limiting yourself a little bit by not being at least slightly interested in it.
Classic Linux propagandist move
To point out reality?
“I like tech, but I don’t actually give a shit about how any of it works” is a really weak take.
Not really
Most people don’t care how their shit works, they just want it to work. People like OP, who seem to have a semi-casual outlook on it aren’t going to need to know how or why anything works.
Then they don’t “like tech.” They like toys made with tech.
And?
That describes 95%+ of the population. I’m a software developer and feel largely the same way as OP. You don’t need to know the intricacies of something to enjoy using it.
Stop gatekeeping shit because people don’t want to be as invested in it as you.
There’s a few specific gaming communities. They’re small, but I can say growing daily. I’m actually a mod of !satisfactory@lemmy.world for example. If one doesn’t exist and you feel up to it, make a community too. I’m sure there are people who are interested. The communities are small, but through nurturing we can grow them up to a nice size.
Check out https://lemmyverse.net/communities, I don’t know how many are active but it only takes one person to make it active!
You need to follow more tags, like game-specific tags and specific tech tags. Sometimes I think federation fails to show all content in the tags, so following more people might help too
What are these tags you speak of?
I think it’s in mastodon and not lemmy.
There are apps that you can use that follow all posts with that one word in it, like liftoff. The lemmy dev was saying they were working on a tagging system, and I thought maybe that came out and I missed it.
In case you’ve not seen it, https://fediverse-explorer.stefanbohacek.dev is really useful for getting around this.
Your parents: we’re content creators.
I would say just subscribe to stuff you like and don’t doom scroll for hours. A 15 min session is all you need to catch up for a day in your interests. Also make some posts in stuff you like and care about.
Totally. While I do want the Fediverse to grow, I have to admit enjoying that the scroll is not quite endless. It really highlights how much garbage we encounter on a daily basis that exists purely to distract and entertain us since I don’t really feel like I’m having FOMO or anything but I’m scrolling way less.
Twitter was designed to be addictive, whereas Mastodon was specifically designed to not be addictive. That’s why scrolling Mastodon feels so boring after a while.
I am subscribed to a shit ton of Linux related communities, but seems like I don’t need to ;D
Have you tried installing Linux?
Yes, yes. Oh, yes. You must try the Linux.
It’s the FOSS equivalent of have you turned it off and on again?
Fear not, there are also extreme political discussions.
Political extremity, Linux, and LGBT… I can’t think of any other major category of the fediverse. Memes don’t count, because they’re usually conveying one of the 3
Fibre crafts is popping off on Mastodon tbh
Awesome. Shit like that is the sort of thing that eventually winds up building an interesting space. Like don’t get me wrong, I’m a gay communist who uses linux, I like what’s here, but I want to see other people’s hobbies here. I want variety enough to draw more people so I can stumble into something I didn’t even realize was cool
You missed furries.
These comments are really proving your point
I’m also in the same boat. I’m simply not interested in running Linux as a daily OS, and pretty much any gaming or tech content here is exclusively that. And then when you express any sort of counter opinion you get attacked.
I’m honestly finding myself scrolling Reddit without participating a lot more than I’m on here.
Android and ChromeOS are also ignored :-D However, I hope you don’t want to talk about operating systems cause now everybody just talk about AI :-/
Android is good. ChromeOS is just normal linux turned against the user
I’m intrigued at this notion that ChromeOS is Linux turned against the user but Android isn’t…
Android is pretty turned against the end user also, their sideloading permissions seem to be explicitly designed to annoy or scare people out of using it, and in my opinion isn’t really needed because we had the one toggle and it’s not like it grants the apps permission to install the apps themselves, it just allows you to click a button. It’s a process designed to add more steps to frustrate the user.
That doesn’t even mention many of the under the hood changes made over the years to worsen user experience, like preventing or making difficult internal audio recording.
Then there’s the whole anti-root thing, which honestly shouldn’t even be a thing in the first place, if you’re going to claim phones are like computers why aren’t they open like them? I do not and will not buy the “security” argument because even windows allows you to delete the entire registry with enough persistence, but on android you have to either get permission from OEM or use an exploit to install root before getting that access.
Okay, Linux phones will be the absolute freedom and make Android obsolete. Once the phones are mature enough
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I have used Linux, I use Linux remotely for work all the time. I very much dislike using it as a desktop OS. It’s still not a functioning gaming OS either. However, it’s constantly pushed down your throat on this website whenever you even mention using windows.
The difference between our advertising and that of the megacorps is that ours is actually driven by passion and love for what we use and create. And that passion won’t stop.
Ok, and?
I’m not interested in using Linux as a desktop OS. I’ve often made that clear, only to be met with “but have you tried this?”
It does the exact same thing as it does for vegans. Instead of bringing people to your cause you alienate them by constantly shoving it in their face.
I’ve often made that clear, only to be met with “but have you tried this?”
Well there’s your problem! Maybe don’t start a conversation if you don’t want to invite responses.
(Also, I’m not going to point out that your claim that Linux still isn’t a functioning gaming OS is no longer true, since you apparently don’t want to hear it. You’re welcome.)
Until all the major anticheats can run on it I can’t consider it a functional gaming OS. If there are games that work on every other major gaming platform, except for Linux, then it’s not up to the same standard
Just saying that you are dealing with passionate people who will not stop. You can either realize and accept that or be annoyed by them forever
Or you can stop trying to force it onto people. Idgaf about your passion. I don’t want to hear about you being vegan and I really don’t care if you only use Linux.
It’s putting people off of joining the platform. I think that’s clear enough that it’s a problem
Maybe if you’re an asshole to enough Linux users they’ll stop talking about it. Lmao
Then you choose to suffer… Go on, keep fighting against windmills.
You remind me that there really are people who want to be upset all the time. And talking to those people is always a waste of time, so bye
False dichotomy.
There’s also blocking and/or muting.
Doesn’t change the fact they’re annoyed every time they need to block a new person. And there will always be new FOSS enthusiasts, especially on this platform
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My most played games constantly have problems on Linux.
Apex Legends regularly falsely bans Linux players
iRacing isn’t Linux compatible, nor will it ever be
Destiny 2 won’t be compatible either
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Not functioning for most modern games is not functioning. Who cares if it runs ancient games if I can’t play modern ones?
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lol what does “power users” have to do with it? Do you seriously believe power users only run Linux?
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Not sure if you realize it, but you’re exactly proving the point of this thread. It comes of as condescending that you assume someone must be uninformed because they don’t agree with you.
I fully realize that people like you would think that. But hey, you totally weren’t condescending here!
I’ve used Linux exclusively on my personal machines since 2004. I still loathe it. I just loathe it marginally less than I loathe Windows.
For Mastodon, you gotta find the hashtags about the things you care about.
For Lemmy, you gotta put in the work to raise the communities you care about. If there are existing communities, post and comment in them. If there isn’t a community about your interest - and if you’re willing - create and maintain them. The people will come.
I’m all in on the fediverse, and want to watch it flourish.
Feels like we’re both getting the wrong content then. 🙃 I do care about Linux and barely see anything about it here.
Same. I get a LOT of news because of what’s going on in the world and some tech stuff. Almost none of it is Linux (and I like it).
and I like it
Get out of here!
Jokes aside… Lemmy has been great for world and tech news! Feels like I don’t need to check my RSS app, or Reddit in order to scratch that itch.
Don’t know how, it’s in every thread and community regardless of Linux affiliation.
There’s people praising Linux in this thread, about how Linux is everywhere.
This shits gonna kill the fediverse.
The world feels very lonely when you care about linux.
Plus people will hit you with a chair if you don’t use it and Firefox.
Before Lemmy, the last time I had touched Linux was back in the 90s, when it was Red Hat on a dozen+ floppies, minimal GUI, and almost all command line. It wasn’t bad, I just didn’t feel like working that hard and there weren’t all that many training resources for it, so I just slid back into to Mac and Windows. No loss.
But over time things change, and I’m not much of a Mac user anymore – their hardware is far too overpriced to keep reinvesting in it, IMO – and after aging out of regular updates on the last version of OS X that will run on my 2016 MacBook Pro, and then trying and failing to build a fully operational hackintosh on a newer Intel NUC, I just gave up and went back to Windows.
But now I’m here on Lemmy and it’s all Linux all the time, oh and Microsoft sucks but lets talk about Linux again, which was a bit much at first. But the truth is that I just hate Windows 10 anyway, always have, and am only using it because it’s pretty much the default now. So I guess I started listening.
After a few weeks of this Lemmy non-stop Linux
promotiondiscussion, I decided to load it up on a 13 year old MacBook with minimal hardware and see if it was any better than what I remembered. If that old MacBook can run it, I thought, maybe I’ll just set it up as a spare. It’s free, why not?Man, it screams. This is nothing like the Linux I remember from the 90s. Holy shit. Even setting up a Linux printer from a Windows share is almost effortless, and I have never been able to do that with only Windows machines. These are full-fledged, well-supported, well-documented operating systems with great video, audio and even peripheral support. And almost all free and open source (I haven’t paid for anything yet myself, though). I was shocked.
So now I’m trying out Linux distros one by one, wiping and then loading another, seeing what there is to see, and when I’ve tried out all the distros I want to try, I’ll install one and bring the rest of my hardware over to Linux. And not only that, but hardware that was just sitting on a shelf collecting dust is now back in full service, and I can think about things I would not have spent money on before, like building a Plex server or a pihole, because now I have a bunch of available hardware. Win/win/win.
TL;DR: People are praising Linux for a reason. Tune out if you want, but don’t be surprised if it ends up working on you anyway, lol.
I’m so glad I joined lemmy because it made me try out linux too. Haven’t touched my windows partition for months. Used nobara for a while, didn’t play nice with nvidia. Mint has been working almost perfectly.
I got my first real start on linux on Mint, too! Really fond memories of using it with the Cinnamon DE.
Favorite distros so far? For someone who doesn’t want to touch the terminal.
I am absolutely loving Zorin Core as a no-command-line, works out of the box Linux OS.
I don’t mind a bit of command line, but I don’t think I’ve had to open Terminal at all in Zorin, and I’ve had it loaded for about three weeks. Printer installs were painless (HP), and what Windows support there is for Linux is largely built in already. I’m not a gamer, so I couldn’t tell you about that, but so far it’s superb and it has worked for me straight out of the box, everything intuitive and easy to find. There’s also a paid version of Zorin, but I haven’t decided on a distro yet so there’s no point.
Mint (Cinnamon desktop) was fault-free and zippy as hell on minimal hardware, and Pop! OS was also no command line for me, but I didn’t play with it very much and intend to reinstall it when I have more time because I don’t think I gave it a decent shake. (At this point I’m not only looking for distros for myself but also for the BIL, so I am making and testing LiveUSBs for both of us. I didn’t want to give him a LiveUSB for something I’d never installed myself so I wiped Pop! OS to be able to give him another distro I hadn’t already tried.)
I’ve tested over a dozen so far, but those are the most noob-friendly, command-line-free distros I have touched so far, if that helps.
EDITED for clarity
Gentoo, you never half to look at a terminal in that distro. Just white text scrolling on a black backdrop for infinity! The people who like to sit through the end credits of a movie would be ecstatic.
Gentoo is great for two things: Firstly, learning about all the parts that go into a Linux system and how they interact. Secondly, typing
emerge worldinto a shell and feeling like a god raising the continents from the ocean.I love Gentoo but I just can’t live with the compile times. Gentoo does a good job of letting you know how little you know about Linux and how deep the rabbit hole can get.
Gentoo is great if you know how you want things to work and know Linux well enough to make it happen. Gentoo gives you flexibility, transparency and great tooling to help you get there.
I tried Linux for years but always have to go to the terminal for something. There’s a reason it’s a default application on every distribution. The CLI can be daunting for the unfamiliar but it’s actually very powerful.
I love the CLI as it’s more powerful and efficient, but to be honest i can’t rememeber a time when i actually needed it for something basic. Browsing (including mail and movies), editing documents, printing, and most changes in configuration can be done through the graphical interface.
But… why?
Just kidding, I get it. It’s definitely more approachable, and can be more intuitive, for sure. I just loved the whole terminal aesthetic from the first time I saw it, so that’s the hammer I hit every nail with.
I think that’s one of the main differences between users, though we get distracted talking about “productivity” or “control” or what-have-you, when it’s mostly just a matter of taste, deep down.
It’s actually amazing how far it has come even for someone who mained Linux all the way to where it has gotten. I put all my family oldies that aren’t able to tech support themselves on Kinoite and it was seamless even for my grandparents and I haven’t had to service the computers since. No more complaints about things taking longer than before to load either. I wish I had this 20 years ago.
Kinoite Fedora? This OS?
https://fedoraproject.org/kinoite/
I tried Fedora but it was a couple of the built-in spins, KDE and Budgie, none of the forks. This is the first I’ve heard of Kinoite, looks intriguing. I’ll have to give it a shot. Thanks!
That’s the one. I personally use bazzite which has a bunch of gaming stuff and distrobox ready to go. It’s also possible to switch to or between it and any of the other ublue spins with a couple lines in the terminal. I’m not sure if the silver blue based ones like kinoite are included in that. It’s neat being able to try out some other DE’s like hyprland and switch to something else without doing a reinstall or losing personal data.
For my non gamer family members kinoite has everything they need though.
The downsides I’ve noticed so far to these immutable systems is mainly with things like messing with kernel modules and other deep system stuff. I wanted to enable undervolting without disabling secure boot but that seems to require building the kernel with a couple patches and signing modules with a mok and installing the mok to uefi. Annoying. The ‘workaround’ is seemingly to make your own ublue spin which sounds like a pain but I’ll try it eventually.
Other than that most things that aren’t in flatpak or fedora rpm repos via rpm-ostree can be installed using arch Linux via distrobox. It’s a bit janky at first but it’s seamless after going in the distrobox and doing ‘distrobox-export --app (name of program to launch via terminal)’ I didn’t like it at first but I have come to enjoy being able to use the software availability of arch without updating everything every other day.
Thank you for taking the time to write that, because I still have a few more distros to try and getting used to the various repos and installers is part of what I look at: having broad access to whatever apps I may need in the future is a big deal, so that is very valuable information for me anyway; and Fedora having access to all things Arch was a main selling point when I was trying Fedora spins and also EndeavourOS. This is much appreciated. Thanks!
Geeks are usually the first ones that populate any kind of a social network.
But, I would have to agree that I don’t think that the fediverse will become anything more than what it is now - a place for geeks to exchange info and their Linux desktop setups.
This is mostly generalized, but I seriously doubt other communities will get popular on Lemmy, like let’s say DIY audio or something similar. They have a good thing going on reddit, free hosting, no one cares who actually pays the electricity bills, the platform is free (as in beer)… not everyone cares about freedom as much as people on the fediverse do 🤷. I’m sorry, but that’s just how things are.
On the other hand, Lemmy is a perfect place to share info and data that might be illegal in some countries (piracy and sharing pr0n vids that are sold on other sites), so i can see niche things like these thriving here… set up your server at home or in China/Russia, set up a reverse proxy… pratically, you’re off the grid regarding copyright claims.
The nerds get chased out. They build a new platform free of shittyness. The nornies notice and migrate milking as much profit as possible. The platform becomes shit. The holy cycle continues.
The nice thing about federation is that if you don’t want normies you can just defed from instances that allow them, or anything with open sign up.
Yeah, to be honest, this is alredy happening with Lemmy, so I wasn’t surprised at all.
Not a fan of the reddit migration, I assume?
No, I was, I really was looking forward to this place and it was pretty OK at the beginning, the first few months, but I did like a pause (some real world obligations) for a few months and I just started coming back, but things are… somewhat different from what I remember them. A lot of abuse of power by mods…
I found some things going in the right direction, like the no stupid questions comm, but other than that… seems like people have gotten more uptight and posh… if that makes any sense.
I’ve exclusively used Linux on my computers since about 2001. At this point, I don’t care to see this much talk about it either.
It’s an operating system, it’s free (in both senses), it’s very powerful and ,frankly, it’s all I know how to use these days. However, I just don’t see the appeal of harping on about all the time. I use it exclusively, and I spend zero minutes per day actually thinking about it, the way a good operating system should be IMHO.
Not to be confrontational with you but… Exhibit A
Touche
If the 3 biggest OS were all FOSS, I would agree.
Right now, Linux is the ONLY major OS that respects user freedom and privacy. Full stop.
The community around Linux isn’t there because user preference; the real reason it exists and so many people are passionate about it is because FOSS software is the difference between a future that looks like Star Trek, and one that looks like Cyberpunk 2077.
Believe me, I get it. 20+ years of advocacy, though, have earned me exactly 1 convert, and that’s my old man. Who is arguably already a bigger geek than I am, and spending his retirement teaching himself x86-64 assembly “for fun” whilst doing a much better job of de-googling himself than I ever have.
All I’m saying here is that I can see where the OP is coming from. There is an awful lot of Linux talk (and Star Trek talk!) here on Lemmy. I can see how it might feel a little alienating to those who are from outside of that world.
That said, I agree with a lot of other commentors here that have pointed out that any new platform typically attracts the geeks firstly (reddit was no different). In time, I hope to see a much greater variety of peoples on Lemmy!
Thank you. As someone who is very interested in Linux, and someone who has proselytized my tech choices in the past (“Everyone should use Signal”), one of my big fears about switching to Linux is that I’ll never shut up about it, and I’ll bore my friends.
Thank you for showing me that there is another way
it’s harder to do than you think. you can tell people about signal because everyone understands messaging. and telling them to use signal is/was good advice!
Trust me you will never even think to get into the differences between wayland and x11. hate systemd? excited about btrfs? it is literally impossible to discuss any of it without shared context.
Not to alarm you, but you may have a period of 5-10 years where you really can’t shut up about it… it’ll pass, though, honest :)
I switched to full-time, permanent Linux use in 2004. I didn’t even have a one-year period where I felt the need to proselytize it like a vegan.
It’s also a fetish.
Are you referring to those stripey sock wearers? Because I’m far too old to actually understand any of that. Plus, I wouldn’t even look very good in stripey socks anyway
I’m sure you’d look good in the socks. Don’t undersell yourself. :)
Hahaha, that’s very kind of you to say! I might have even pulled it off 20 years ago… Never say never, eh! ;)
I’m not sure if I look good in them or not, I only wear them because they feel comfy.
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Oh, hush now, of course I care! I’m just agreeing with OP that there is probably a little too much of it or, more precisely, not enough “other” topics of conversation yet. It’ll come.
I feel there are a lot of philosophical and practical similarities between the FediVerse and the open source operating system world. That’s why a lot of people tend to be on both.
The thing about the FediVerse is that you are the only responsible for your feed. Try looking for different content, different people, or different instances, to find more content that resonates more with you and follow those accounts and communities.
I was annoyed at first by all the Linux content, but honeslty I’ve kinda grown to like it. It feels strangely wholesome somehow.
People supporting open platforms on an open platform is awesome. People complaining about people liking open platforms on an open platform is sortof strange.
It’s not strange once you start to notice how threads about topics like Windows get instantly undermined by loud Linux proponents saying things that everyone knows already.
