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What do you mean you don’t like reading documentation to use the basic functions of my OS?
Why would anyone ever want to use a UI or a mouse?
The biggest barrier to widespread adoption is the portion of the toxic parts of the general community. You know who they are, you see them all the time. They exist across all distros, and they seem to go out of their way to make the experience as miserable as possible when new users are asking simple questions.
They often are some of the first people new users interact with when needing help transitioning over. They seek out those beginner questions to act superior, and just turn the average user off to the point they decide to never try it again.
Without strong moderation to reduce that dipshit commentary, the Linux community will always be working against mainstream adoption.
The biggest barrier to widespread adoption is the portion of the toxic parts of the general community.
You should be careful with that. Because what exactly are those toxic parts, when deciding upon strategy of fighting against them, might be understood differently.
That’s why most elitists on Linux spaces don’t know WTF they are talking about, but the elitists who deed have been pressed out earlier.
Also I really don’t see any problem with pointing someone to a place in a well-written manual. After answering a few simple questions, of course, and seeing that they don’t understand hints that all this is documented specifically to avoid annoying other people.
Documentation has gotten worse too. Veronica Explains discussed this issue in one of their videos. If you look at some good examples of documentation like the Commodore 64 manual, it explains concepts to an audience unfamiliar with computers in a way that’s easy to understand. Lots of modern software doesn’t have docs like this anymore. Then, on top of that, you have the condescending users in help forums.
Discovered Veronica recently… ❤
What’s something you think could be made easier or just fixed if implemented as a plugin in kde, gnome, or as a software for every other DE?
I don’t think that there is any one issue that hurts the Linux desktop, I think it is more a matter of death by a thousand cuts.
I think for the Linux desktop to be (more) successful we need dedicated QA teams, with a direct connection to usability developers that constantly test and write automated tests for the whole integration on different hardware, and fix any issue as well.
Valve doesn’t have much interest besides it working good enough, so we would need either china or EU to fund a group to do that for us
Yes, currently Valve is mostly interesting in a base system that just runs Steam and games, not a general Linux desktop. Commercial Linux distributions are more about servers and professional workstations.
We either need PC hardware manufacturers or public funding to push Linux desktop, since I don’t think that normal users would pay directly for a Linux system.
PC hardware manufacturers however are more about selling the next device that constantly improving a system non-customers could also use for free, so I doubt they would commit to it fully, and instead use it for marketing.
So all that is left is public funding.
you’re describing opensuse Tumbleweed and its OpenQA suite
There was a long time when a casual user would have been better off on Windows, but I don’t think that’s true anymore, at least not on every distro.
Just as you can use Windows for years and never need Group Policy or Regedit, you can do Linux just the same without terminal.
This is the area where I feel Linux has come the farthest since I became interested in it.
If you are using Linux you should learn terminal basics. The terminal is a very powerful tool that can be useful if you learn it. That doesn’t mean you need to use it all the time but it is nice to have in some cases.
I just have never had a Linux system that didn’t require some sort of terminal work to fix the occasional bug. A couple of updates ago Fedora left me with conflicting packages that needed the terminal to straighten out.
Here’s the thing that a lot of long-term linux users don’t seem to understand: If it involves typing out a command in a terminal, or editing a configuration text file, 99% of casual users are already out. It doesn’t matter if they just copy-paste a command or have change a single number in a text file, they literally don’t even want to try, they consider that “too complicated”.
And yet I had to edit a config.json file for a program to run on my friend’s w11 pc yesterday, interesting…
I mean, you’re right, he was too dumb to do it, but also that was on windows.
and that’s why catering to casuals is a loosing game that shouldn’t be bothered with.
Loosing what? A volley of arrows? I don’t generally care about small typos like this, but it’s always fun to be the reason an elitist prick is losing at elitism.
loosing the terminal and RTFM at the newcomers.
~When in doubt double down~
Except Windows does cater to it, and despite Linux’ supposed superiority it is still by far the dominant desktop OS.
I feel like the gap between windows and more user friendly distros like Ubuntu and Mint is pretty narrow now. Linux still has to shake off the reputation of being difficult to use though. I’m not sure what that will take.
Microsoft has held onto the market with a variety of tools, even some downright anti competitive practices. Even if Linux was hypothetically a better OS, in every way, for every user, toppling MS as the dominant player would be still met with some resistance. That’s what happened with OS/2, and that was backed up by IBM.
Gee, I wonder why Linux only has 2% market share?
Users copying and pasting random command line code from the Internet should be fine
It is how every community support page works.
For windows. Poweshell that regedit it will fix everything.
Had to do this recently for a borked nvidia driver on windows. Welcome to computers!
Lol, what? This is suggesting window is simple?
Linux is so much better in this regard.
People don’t see it because they have habits, but once you support both OS’s, windows is full of bizarre quirks and nonsense.
It’s a big abstract to understand, are you trying to say that there are Linux enthusiasts that protest GUIs being made simple and intuitive, and that if they succeed, would-be Linux users will go back to Windows, which is more intuitive?
Maybe for KDE, but just introduce new users to GNOME, that’s perfectly intuitive and even looks great!
I found gnome so unintuitive that i ended up switching to a different shell to uninstall it because I couldnt figure out how to close that app selection menu thing. (Though maybe I’m just bad at figuring out UX flows that are intuitive for most, seeing how I also despaired as my prof handed me his macbook for my thesis presentation and I didn’t manage to open the file, though tbf there I couldn’t even try to google it and was already nervous)
I’m sure it’s not hard once you know but any UX flow that isn’t already familiar can cause issues like that. Which is why KDE will feel much more friendly to the average windows user since it works the same way for the most part.
Did you follow the tour?
Gnome requires a different way of thinking. It works great for some but if you come from a long Windows/Mac background it probably is to much of a culture shock. It is not for everyone and that’s ok.
Fully guilty of not even knowing there is one. I kinda just poked around installing DEs until I found one I liked.
It’s definitely the windows background for me though, gnome is just entirely different. Not saying it’s bad, but the people we’re trying to convince to switch usually have just as much of a windows (or sometimes mac) background, and often less willingness to learn.
Wait what’s wrong with KDE? I’d think a windows user would be more comfortable in KDE than GNOME any day.
idk about others, but for me, KDE feels unpolished. Besides breeze, nearly every theme feels or is unfinished. Now, gnome is also pretty finicky to theme, but in the end i had some pretty uniform and fully featured results which I haven’t been able to replicate on KDE. Also extensions on gnome are pretty neatly implemented. The only downsite do gnome is how stingy they are with Wayland (No server side decorations and other important features)
It’s hard making things simple, it requires research with focus groups, constant testing, firm guidelines based on the results.
They’ve done a lot of that in the middle 90s to middle 00s, when after things moving fast most GUIs were so atrocious it was just necessary. Thus classic Windows versions and classic MacOS (till 9) and Amiga Workbench and even Windows XP are very usable. Even OpenLook and Motif are not so bad.
Today we have a lot of network effects and inability to just drop something we hate to use, thus the market incentive for a similar widespread optimization of GUIs doesn’t form.
So - both KDE and Gnome today are horrible, but Gnome folks are at least trying very hard. I generally like KDE more, but their ergonomics were always overloading me as an ASD person to the degree of being exhausted by 15 minutes of using it.
Gnome is less overloading, but - use of titlebars to show custom controls for every application is good for wow-effect, but bad when you want to expect only one function from titlebar in every application. And the paradigm of Windows taskbar or Motif icons or something else for hidden windows being indicated and immediately accessible is good. If they don’t like taskbars, they could add something like iconbox in TWM or old FVWM or such. And a more Spartan (like usual) application menu.
TLDR, between imitating Apple/touchscreen UIs and ergonomics Gnomers have to make a compromise, or pick one lane. Right now it’s quite irritating when in some place they pick the latter and in some the former.
I think KDE and Gnome are much more user friendly than Mac or Windows. They just work and the UI tends to be fairly consistent and clean. I think this is due to foss and not having to worry about saving money by not fixing things.
Than today’s Mac and Windows - sure. But take w2k or macos 9 - and hell no. Those are much cleaner and more consistent.
Evil or not, w2k is something everyone should thank MS for, it’s really how it should be.
Maybe I’ve been using KDE too much, but what’s unintuitive about it?
Maybe unintuitive is the wrong word, but for new users the amount of options can be overwhelming, and the UI looks… not very modern by default, lol
Ok so we went from talking about how intuitive/easy to use it is to how it looks. Looks are much more subjective and also depend greatly on theming even if it’s just using a light or dark theme.
Back to the original question of is it intuitive. For a windows user trying Linux for the first time, most would prefer a DE with a start bar on the bottom by default, some might prefer the look of older versions of windows. (Remember that widows 8 and 11 had/have terrible adoption rates). And others really won’t care much but will just want to be able to quickly find their apps.
I was a windows user for a long time. I only stopped at windows 10 cause I was sock of ads and candy crush soda saga acting like it was a core component of the OS. When I ran windows 8, the first thing I did was install an app that made the start menu look like windows 7. When I first tried gnome I’m 2012 it was so weird. It felt like if apple had made windows 8 with a side dock and a start button that took over the whole screen and these large buttons with a lot of wasted space with long transitions that my computer couldn’t really render.
I switched to XFCE and loved it, thought this was more windows like. It did seem to be lacking some features and didn’t look as modern but it was so much easier to use i liked it more. then I switched to KDE and thought this is what windows wants to be. I also loved all the settings that were configurable and how much control I had over the look.
I still use gnome for work (gnome DE is required) and have KDE on my personal and I got to say how much more productive I am with KDE over gnome.
How does plasma6 not look modern by default? It’s mostly how Windows look like.
Well yeah I know how the defaults look like, really didn’t need that reminder?
So what’s wrong with plasma6? (Compare it with win10)
Windows 10 wasn’t even on my list as it is not a modern OS any more (it has been replaced by Windows 11), but even so it had a better UI, without those weird UI features that just serve to look bad
- floating taskbar at the bottom, not actually at the bottom, above it
- those blue highlights around widgets that do not look good
- that horrible off white colour for widgets
- general bad design
And of course windows 11 and GNOME improve with even more UI features
- blur
- transparency that actually looks good
- rounded corners that look good
Basically, it’s not one specific thing that makes KDE look bad, but rather their general approach to design, which seems to be ‘we don’t care what we’re doing, we’ll just set the default to something random as we expect users to customise it anyway’ which is fine for advanced users, but not so friendly to new users
Clearly, Gnome is the most modern looking of the three.
It might be GNOME or it might be Windows 11 (although of the Linux ones it’s still GNOME), but KDE is clearly (subjectively) the most ‘programmer art’ of the 3
Subjectively, I think, KDE/Plasma would make me unproductive compared to Gnome, maybe not as much as being on Win11 for sure. Both are cluttered and distracting from my point of view.
I am looking forward to niri, because I realized that GTK is the real king that makes Gnome so awesome to use. Niri would make window management even better. (:
A word on new Linux users: I have seen most prefering Gnome, older people tend to prefer the Gnome classic, because they are used to the idea to see which programs are currently running (taskbar). And this makes it easier for me to help them, because it still behaves like a modern desktop.
The KDE/Plasma/XFCE/Cinamon users around me are all long time Linux users. They made a dicision for themselves and know how to use it.
are you trying to say that there are Linux enthusiasts that protest GUIs being made simple and intuitive, and that if they succeed, would-be Linux users will go back to Windows, which is more intuitive?
Not just GUI, but that’s a prime example. A good one would also be the whole debate about warning measures in apt so it doesn’t just happily remove essential system components like xorg. That debate came up after LinusTechTips’ video where Pop!_OS became unusable as he tried to install Steam. Good example as countless people blamed him for “executing commands he didn’t understand”, he as well as System76 were flooded with hate for “making Linux look bad”. Which, well, in that case it absolutely was as there were no safeguards or structures preventing either a wrongly configured package to be published in the repo, nor for the user to not remove essential parts of your system with a command that isn’t specifically about them (
sudo apt install steam). Anyone who’s arguing that more of the Linux software stack should aim to be more stable and accessible usually gets hated on, and people who’re new to Linux but also say they don’t want to get into PCs but just use it and for it to work are getting alienated and in some cases outright attacked.Windows obviously isn’t really more intuitive compared to a fully working Gnome or KDE environment except for people who already know it for decades. That’s not what it’s about in this case though, but people who expect literally everyone to spend weeks and months learning about concepts, commands and structures in their computer that by now is second nature to them but not interesting to many others. It’s xkcd 2501 in a nutshell, but with toxicity sprinkled on top. Common users mostly have to stay in certain corners like the Linux Mint forums to consistently have a good time, and it really sucks.
I don’t really have social circles that show of Linux elitism. While on public spaces and have the time and energy I try to help out as best I can in a respectful manner and make sure not to get frustrated or annoyed at peoples need to learn things. While I haven’t encountered the elitism myself I can obviously see why it would be extremely off putting to encounter it as a new user and it saddens me a bit to hear about it.
I have a few local friends who wishes to give Linux a go now and decided to hook them up with containerbased systems, in this case since they play video games I chose to give Bazite a go for them specifically for the reason that ruining it with modifying installed packages is going to be harder. I don’t mind helping them out myself however and have found the bazzite community pretty forgiving as well luckily.
A good one would also be the whole debate about warning measures in apt so it doesn’t just happily remove essential system components like xorg. That debate came up after LinusTechTips’ video where Pop!_OS became unusable as he tried to install Steam.
Linus had to override a warning message so serious that he had to literally type in “Yes, do as I say!” – including the exclamation point! – in order to force it. Quit your bullshit.
Should’ve been more verbose with that argument.
Yes, there was that single safety measure. Will this single thing with the white text next to hundreds of other rows of white text create sufficient awareness to discourage someone who was 1. told by the internet that “this is the solution!” and 2. has no notion about the severity of this action given they’ve nothing to compare it to except systems (and the web) that constantly cry for attention? Lol no, absolutely not.
There’s a good reason fatal warnings are almost always red or yellow and there are literally pictograms of human skulls in warning signs. People will not understand some white text next to a ton of other white text (that’s utterly incomprehensible to most of them, raising the tendency of people to disregard all of it) paired with something akin to a captcha as the fatal warning it was meant to be. That is not how (a majority of) humans work. The warning as it was back then provided no sufficient safeguards for newcomers, yet gave people sufficient reason to blame them. Although, and that’s the worst part, they have to be applauded for even featuring a warning at all.
The argument that came up afterwards was about exactly this, making the warning adequate and sufficient so even if the information on the internet said they should execute this, people are still being made sufficiently aware so they’re more likely to stop despite feeling that whatever they want might be just around the corner. But of course there’ll always be some people who prefer to call others stupid for their lack of experience or mistakes, especially if they want to protect something from criticism they identify with.
My previous statement was bad, but I stand with the opinion about the whole debate from back then being a good example.
A good one would also be the whole debate about warning measures in apt so it doesn’t just happily remove essential system components like xorg.
Yes, there was that single safety measure.
You are contradicting yourself.
There’s a good reason fatal warnings are almost always red or yellow and there are literally pictograms of human skulls in warning signs.
I mean this is the most respectful way possible… You are looking for a walled garden that protects its users. Linux is not that, never has been, and probably never will be. There are other options like Windows and MacOS that fill that role.
There are some extremely toxic members of the community but your complaint comes from the way Linux runs. If you/they don’t like how it runs then why are you forcing it?
You are contradicting yourself.
I already admitted my previous statement being bad.
You are looking for a walled garden that protects its users.
No, I don’t. There’s a difference between a walled garden and a safe environment, the word itself even says it. Windows, iOS etc. outright build closed boxes you can’t escape. The Linux community rightfully doesn’t like that, but to a degree where we hardly even have proper safety rails next to cliffs and either no or insufficient warning labels next to exposed 11kV powerlines. Yet we expect people who don’t know what they see to not hurt themselves and instead stand still and study books for a few weeks. Even worse, in an attempt to keep answers as universal as possible the correct answers often are that “it’s easy, just hook up X to the 11kV powerline” (equal to editing grub.conf, xorg.conf, or anything else that could literally kill your system or user-essential parts like the graphical interface).
I’m so fed up with the notion that any change that adds safety rails is seen as building walls. Just because you have to add “–no-preserve-root” to delete your root folder you’re not prevented from destroying your OS if you want to (people seriously argued against this change). Improving the apt warning so humans pick it up is not a wall either.
You seem to know a lot. So why not make those changes yourself? If you want bigger flashier warnings then do it. There is nothing stopping you. Depending on your skill you could have had it done in less time than you spent on this meme and thread.
I’m not trying to be argumentative but you sound like you want the linux community to build what you want and disregard their own wants. In addition, you want the community to be extra super nice to you when they do it. The sense of entitlement is astounding.
Whatever you need to tell yourself about people voicing criticism the community culture to shut it down. I’m already contributing to the best of my abilities, so please stop with the “just fix it yourself” nonsense. Not even professionals like Torvalds would have the ability to to all that. Hell, not even companies can; System76 ends up creating a whole new DE because the cultural and structural issues with Gnome were so severe, and they’re working on it for years now (arguably they could’ve moved to KDE, a new DE without old baggage might be a good idea though). Some parts of the Linux community even are so toxic they’re famous for ripping each other apart regularly, like the Kernel devs.
It’s this whole culture and the bad decisions it causes I’m criticizing. And the only way to change anything about such a thing literally is to loudly criticize it, and to introduce new people with new perspectives. Who unfortunately more often than not get alienated by all the toxicity.
just introduce new users to GNOME, that’s perfectly intuitive and even looks great!
Gnome 2 sure, modern not so much. I mean when useful features are cut from the GUI it just means it’s harder to actually do things. Like removing “open in terminal” made non-GUI stuff more difficult (esp. w/complicated directory).
I’d say XFCE or Cinnamon or anything else like those are better.
What’s wrong with Gnome Shell? It looks very sleak and modern albeit really hard to customise.
I guess I would boil it down to: I’m not using Linux on a touchscreen and am unlikely to any time soon. I’m not even sure if/when I’ll ever go beyond 1080p (and a small screen at that) because cost.
I don’t want a dock or full-screen apps menu. I don’t want to fix those (or missing features) using extensions. I do want to customize things*, but otherwise I don’t need my desktop to look new or exciting.
* I even made my own hyper-minimal XFWM window theme (which is honestly unneeded for maximized applications due to my XFCE settings anyway, but it does allow me to have a rolled-up music player always visible like an old-internet music widget).
Honestly most modern Linux software is fine.
I personally like gnome but I think the key with gnome is you need to learn the workflow. If it works for a user it feels very natural and clean but if you want something that’s close to Windows or Mac gnome isn’t it.
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man this is a good linux meme, its funny and its real criticism of linux. why were all the linux memes shitty for a while there? why are they better now suddenly?
Fuck right off with that, whoever actually made this image. I am fed up with “simplification”, which is actually making everything as dumb and as closed as possible
What an out of touch take
Lol. I am writing this from a phone where I can’t even see entire file system. Fuck those who made this, fuck those who think it is a good thing
Why did you buy an iPhone
I did not, that’s Android
Depending on your device, you can root it and get full system access.
Don’t even need root just need to download pretty much any option other than the stock file manager. Amaze, simple, whatever, it’s all better than the garbage google “engineers” made.
That will get you much more for sure, but they were seemingly referring to the entire filesystem, which does require root.
Whatch this, lol
And rooting is such an easy thing to do. Which is also why I wrote my initial comment
Edit: Sadly the absurdness is the other direction
See other thread
Looks like you need a doctor. Or a linguist. Don’t make inability to read ruin your life
Heres the thing, it strongly depends what you mean by “simplification” and tbh im not sure that would be good for Linux. Im all in favor of adding accessibility features and making desktops more complete but sometimes complexity or being different is good. I love tiling for example, I love how comsic implemets tiling. However tiling isnt naturally intuitive to Windows users, does that mean we need to abandon it in favor of “simplification”? Do we need to abandon the system of distro maintained repos and package managers because “its too complicated”?
I suppose my point is that we should make Linux more accessible by lowering the skill floor to use it but it should not and does not require lowering the skill ceiling for advanced users like me. I love the focus on TUI software and I love the terminal (that doesn’t mean GUI software should get less love, it means I would rather not see TUI packages sacrificed).
Furthermore I cannot speak for anyone but myself but I personally try to help people in matrix/discord chats and places like this. However sometimes I will come across someone whos use case doesn’t fit Linux. Maybe they need a specific software, maybe they’re using niche proprietary hardware that they need, but I personally refuse to suggest Linux to someone if it wont be good for them. If someone tells me “hey I use Linux but I need some software like adobe” I would suggest they reinstall Windows. In addition before I reccomend Linux to someone I tell them that Linux isnt Windows, I make it clear there are downsides that need to be taken with the upsides and sometimes things wont work exactly the same.
TLDR: Im all for people using Linux, however we shouldn’t lie to ourselves and others
I’ve seen the exact same assholes in this community. They’ll argue on one hand that it’s not too complicated, then openly push back against any UI improvement because they don’t want more people moving into their niche. Gatekeeping turds.
If you don’t like a particular piece of software move on to something else. It is entirely up to the dev since it is ultimately there project. They owe nothing to you and demanding things does nothing but annoy everyone.
I’m gonna point out the reluctance to improve the user experience to those who complain at the low number of user migrations. Try and stop me.
Example? Why are there always people who can find these unicorns and I never seem to run into them.
Or are you being extreme in calling gatekeeping because they feel they don’t need the GUI, because it just works? Someone argued with me about how a GUI is necessary for everything and frankly it is the slowest way to convey information and the least accurate.
But if YOU want a GUI, welcome to open source, and feel free to implement it.
Point is, I don’t think people are trying to gatekeep, or hold onto their niche, it just doesn’t make sense or scratch their own itch.
I’ve seen it in this very sub. But I’m not gonna hunt down the comments.
You have seen, in this sub, about Linux Memes in your words: “Gatekeeping Turds … who push back on UI improvements because they dont want people moving into their niche.”
Yeah. Right. This is exactly the place you have found a group of people who do not want you to make changes because they are defending… checks notes… the “niche” of open source software.
Yeah, I am thinking this might be a you problem. And I am trying to say this in a nice way: anyone can made that change. Asking someone else to do it may get push back, but that is any software development. Effort vs reward. But to claim the want to hold onto a niche… in open source? Uh… ok.
No worry dude. You don’t have to believe it. Now that you’re gonna be blocked, you won’t even have to see it.
Yeah. Blocked. A thing I have never done in 12 years at reddit or here.
So this person doesn’t want a conversation, and immediately goes to blocked while calling people names.
Yep it is a them problem.
And I always find it so strange, because when did people not be able to disagree? I have disagreed with some on on one topic and then found them in another forum being brilliant about that other thing.
This blocked, I never want to see or talk to you again, is something so new to me.
In the old days I would have just assume they are trolling. I am beginning to wonder if that isn’t their plan afterall.
My only beef with this lately has been valutwarden.
like look, I get it, http is shit, but I’m on a local network and it isn’t shared or even published to the greater internet in any way… can’t I NO, YOU WILL USE DNS CERTS PER ARTICLE 1.2 OF THE INSTALLATION GUIDE AND YOU WILL SET UP A REVERSE PROXY WITH CLOUDFLARE…
ughhhh
To configure most suckless tools you need to… recompile them. The readme says:
Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, it’s pointless to make binary packages of it. This keeps its userbase small and elitist. No novices asking stupid questions.
But if you are trying to compile suckless tools, you are already in too deep.
Wow. Just wow. What a bunch of utter darlings. Just let them stew in their own idiocy.
Edit: To clarify, I mean the people who wrote this readme.
You need to edit a C header file used as a config file, and run make and use the resulting executable file. That hardly keeps out anyone.
At the same time DWM is very convenient, and so was WMII.
That keeps out 90% of the population. Do not underestimate how complex that is to people who aren’t tech-savvy and who are used to “it just works”.
Something having an X-Wing pic keeps out a lot of people too, cause not everyone likes Star Wars. What’s your point?
A preference for digital media and requiring someone to edit a file then recompile the project are two different things entirely. I don’t care for star wars and wouldn’t care what images they had from those movies, but even though I’m a dev and absolutely could build the source if needed. I’m quite likely not going to care enough to do that. A user that has never messed with source code is likely not going to be comfortable doing all that.
You gotta remember that your average user isn’t a dev. They aren’t someone who’s used to modifying configs to set something up. They’re more like your grandmother who isn’t even comfortable looking into the settings app on their phone.
To remain polite, I’ll note that this subject has nothing to do with “your average user” or anything else connected to selling something useless to somebody who doesn’t care. All this grandma and average user and other talk is absolutely out of place about tools never intended to be sold on a market or be used by everyone. You are not required to use suckless tools in the first place.
I don’t find it difficult, and have enjoyed sxmo on the PinePhone. I understand the suckless approach, but I do have to admit that many people that I know, even tech-savvy ones, probably would not want to rebuild to configure something.
probably would not want to rebuild to configure something.
It builds in a second. About DWM. It’s 2k lines of C code, all they do is basic functionality. It’s not some cumbersome process of setting up an environment, and then looking at running lines of compiler output as if you were some fscking Neo installing Gentoo.
I know how to compile my own software, but I’m not gonna fucking do it. I’ll leave a comment where I can calling the devs lazy assholes (because they are) and move on with life, as will many others
Because that’s unnecessary elitism, and it’s gross. Also, 1 step of extra work is bullshit and wastes human life for no fuckin reason
If you’ve seen suckless tools, the whole point is that they are rudimentary. DWM is one header file and one source code file of ~2k lines.
It’s not lazy because having a config file wouldn’t add anything to using those things, and it’s not elitism or gross because it’s not hard for those who understand why’d they use suckless tools at all. It also contributes to atmosphere.
FFS, please stop trying to press other people to do things your way, that’s what’s gross.
LOL yes, I had a look at those too when I was looking for a more minimal terminal. Noped the fuck out when I read you had to recompile the tools to configure them.
It’s not that this is beyond my skill level, but that is just so … why would I want to do that?
Acting like this is some impossible task is a bit of a stretch. It’s 2 commands.
It’s probably not that bad, but the attitude towards novice users is a red flag. I get not having the time or energy to respond to each and every help request, but putting that in a readme is basically telling users that they’re on their own. I think I’d get ridiculed if I started asking for help.
It’s a good strategy if you’re trying to keep your software niche though.
To be clear, it seems like cool software. Compiling every time you need to change your config seems excessive to me, but I think I get the vibe. There’s just no reason to be preemptively hostile to new users.
Those dudes are lost in the sauce. Nobody should be using big endian these days
The problem is that the road between creating a piece of software that does something well, and then creating simplification layers on top of it is typically much longer than just “edit a config file” and “here’s a readme”.
You need extra documentation, config gating and workflow, warnings, UI/UX work etc.
I know there are Linux elitists but kind of expecting that much extra work for what is still at it’s core mostly volunteer software seems like it’s own form of elitism.
The thing is, simple can mean two things, and they are quite often at odds with each other.
It can mean simple to understand, or simple to use.
For example, a piece of software that’s just a binary, a config file and a man page describing the config file and the software’s behavior is generally quite easy to understand. Like, you can fit the idea of the program entirely into your mind and “comprehend” it, though it may not be easy to use for a novice.
By contrast, a piece of software that contains additional layers for easy of use, like a GUI to edit options, may be simple to use, but not necessarily simple to understand. The additional layers add more complexity that does not contribute to core functionality of the program, it can become unclear what gets changed where when you click on buttons, the config file is likely not documented, human readable or editable, or it may even be a completely opaque configuration database (the registry), … So making the software more simple to use, often makes it harder to comprehend.
I, and I think many other nerds, like software that is simple in the “comprehensible” sense, we want to be able to wrap our head around it completely and we don’t mind putting in a little bit of effort to achieve that comprehension, whereas other people prefer to hit the ground running.
Absolutely agreed, I find it extremely telling that most people who say that have never personally contributed nor donated. Its ok to have expectations but its not ok to make demands from volunteers, thats why so many devs get burnt out and leave.
But I’ve never met anyone like this. Do they exist?
Git gud n00b!
/s, of course.
I’ve come across this kind of response a few times on here and elsewhere, but I think it’s nowhere near as prevalent as it’s sometimes made out to be.
They are literally in this thread here.
