Linux fanboys have ruined it’s image. Most of them take pride in doing simple things in an over complicated manner and wonder why people won’t switch. Even basic tasks like loading kernels or installing something is told in such a gatekeeping manner that scares new users into adapting it.
I think this hit close to home. As a community, we really need to strive to be better here. I typically don’t post much in any Linux forums. I feel like I am still too new to offer “the correct answer”, and keep quiet and leave it to the “experts”; like it isn’t my place to try to help. I guess I need to get over that and do my part from now on.
The Linux communities have been among some of the worst communities I’ve had the displeasure of dealing with. The reason is simple: many Linux users are asocial outcasts. The greatest thing to people who feel underpowered is to have power over somebody else. Combine that with the inability to express oneself properly due to lack of physical, social contact, and you get the stereotypical pedantic, argumentative, shower once a week, “akshually”, overweight neckbeard.
There are exceptions of course and things have gotten better in the last 10 years, due to the addition of other underrepresented groups (ethnical minorities, sexual minorities, etc.) who, thanks to the proliferation of digital technology, have found a sort of refuge behind screens and somewhat away from their oppressors. Also, with more people on the planet, Linux being more present, geek culture becoming cool (Vin Diesel plays DnD, Marvel is a huge franchise, tech entrepreneurs becoming fashion icons and being referenced in popular media, …), Snowden banging on about privacy so much that Malus nows sells itself with it, and a lot more stuff happening, Linux has gotten an influx of people who aren’t traditionally socially excluded.
Open source has a big chance to become cool and mainstream. We just have to be more accepting and helpful of people who join, and willing to have interfaces for non-technical users that don’t ever, ever want to see a terminal.
Well put. Your first paragraph sometimes describes some interactions I have on Lemmy as well, but thankfully most of the people are nice.
Things are starting to improve on that front, at least on the OS level, even the Arch community is more welcoming these days. There is still a ton of gatekeeping in certain areas, though. Ask a beginner question on WineHQ sometime, for example.
