Comment on Bazzite the popular SteamOS-like Linux gets NVIDIA support in Beta
luciferofastora@lemmy.zip 1 week agoYou mean the link that aays
Universal Blue rests on the idea of bringing cloud native patterns to the operating system. We leverage standard cloud tools like the OCI standard images, Docker/Podman, and GitHub to build our images.
and assumes those terms already mean something to you? Oh wait, cloud native is a link again let’s see…
CNCF is the open source, vendor-neutral hub of cloud native computing, hosting projects like Kubernetes and Prometheus to make cloud native universal and sustainable.
Great! Two more technical terms! Oh, there’s another text further down the page.
As part of the Linux Foundation, we provide support, oversight and direction for fast-growing, cloud native projects, including Kubernetes, Envoy, and Prometheus.
Nope, still no explanation, but we’ve got another link, this time to an actual definition:
Cloud native practices empower organizations to develop, build, and deploy workloads in computing environments (public, private, hybrid cloud) to meet their organizational needs at scale in a programmatic and repeatable manner. It is characterized by loosely coupled systems that interoperate in a manner that is secure, resilient, manageable, sustainable, and observable.
Cloud native technologies and architectures typically consist of some combination of containers, service meshes, multi-tenancy, microservices, immutable infrastructure, serverless, and declarative APIs — this list is non-exhaustive.
Aaaand it’s another wall of technical terms.
What is “easy to understand” about this, unless you’re already familiar enough with that specific technical field that it really isn’t an issue in the first place? A definition directed at experts is no explanation, and hitting a reader with a wall of terms they don’t even know how to classify, let alone understand, isn’t very accessible.
And on that note, you said you couldn’t find a definition of Atomic on Fedora’s site… So I clicked just one link from your posted link there and found this.
Sorry, I didn’t think I’d have to “Get started” on a particular distro to find a note on what the whole “atomic” thing they advertise is about. Wouldn’t have killed them to put that paragraph on the previous page already, just a small note at the top, to explain the selling point they’re using.
Linux is going to have a LOT of terms a new user will have to learn. The idea of a cloud native image may cause a misconception, but no more so than any of the other myriad terms a new user will have to learn.
That’s an issue I’ve complained about before: The entry barrier is too high still. People shouldn’t have to learn a lot of new terms, if at all possible. In that vein, it’s better to start out with distros that require less learning, and if the interest grips you, start learning and exploring from there.
But if you have to learn terms, it should be ordered from most fundamental and universal to most specific, and I’d put “cloud native” in the back half of that spectrum. You’ll need to know what a file system is, for instance, may need to learn the term distro / distribution and many more, but for the immediate operation of a system, you don’t need to know what OCI, Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, Prometheus, deploying, workloads or “loosely coupled systems that interoperate in a manner that is secure, resilient, manageable, sustainable, and observable” mean.
So I genuinely do recommend starting out with something less laden with technical terms, and working your way up from there. I started out with Ubuntu, now I’m using Nobara and plan to use my old spare drive to try some other flavours like Silverblue. It’s not that I don’t think the learning isn’t worth it, it’s just that it shouldn’t be frontloaded.
I read your posted argument from earlier, and I want to believe you when you argue your goal is to push for Linux to be more accessible. But the reality of your arguments seem to tell a different story. You seem more interested in dying on a pointless hills while dissuading interested converts from trying what is one of the most stable and user friendly distros I’ve ever tried.
My gripe with Bazzite isn’t whether it’s user friendly, but whether its maintainers are. The founder made a point of telling people “the more I see this whining the more I want to keep it on the website”, because it’s an accurate definition, no matter how useless. I like reasonable discussion, I can accept personal disagreement, but what I’m seeing here is a user providing a prime example of the confusion the word causes and the founder replying to the effect of “now I want to use it even more”.
That’s the exact opposite of accessibility. That’s someone saying “By the way, this is a barrier” and getting the reply “Yes, and people complaining about it makes me want to keep it.” It’s not even “Sorry, this can’t be helped” so much as “I want this barrier to be there” for no good reason.
So that is a hill I will fight on, not because of the specific term but because of the culture behind it that plagues the tech sphere at large. We’re building walls of technical understanding requirements instead of bridges of explanations. Some walls are reasonable, some necessary, some harmless. Some gaps are too wide for a single bridge to cross, so you’ll need to take a detour over other concepts. But building walls out of spite, along with (not represented here, but also common) scoffing at those looking to build bridges or telling people looking for entry “just scale the wall”, are communication culture issues that serve to isolate rather than integrate.
doomcanoe@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Yeah, and if you click enough links on Wikipedia you always wind up at logic, math, or philosophy. At some point, you are going to have to read new words to learn new things. And it will get increasingly technical as you go deeper.
But bazzite devs don’t just leave you up shit’s creek with a turd for a paddle. They still make installing and gaming on Linux far more accessible than the majority of other distros. With a significantly smaller learning curve. And provide solid guides for new users that use beginner friendly language.
And therein lies the crux of my problem with your argument. Scaring folks away to seek out another distro where they will almost certainly have to learn more to get started is hurting your stated cause. You claim to be fighting the good fight against “unreasonable barriers of entry”, but you are causing more than you are solving. Over a very ignorable term.
When it was just you arguing over the value of the term with the dev, okay, whatever. But when you throw a new user asking for help out to sea because you had an argument that has no bearing on the significant reduction to the barrier of entry to Linux gaming that Bazzite provides, you are shooting your own goal in the head.
You didn’t care that they used a single term that might cause confusion, you didn’t care that a person who was looking for help on getting started with Linux gaming was asking about installing one of the most beginner friendly distros, you wanted to win an argument and hold a grudge.
Maybe you don’t even see it yourself, the road to hell is paved with good intentions after all, but the obvious outcome of your actions directly go against the goals you claim to have.
luciferofastora@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
Provided you’re willing to dig deep, yes, but Wikipedia usually offers a summary of the term at the top. In the event, I found Wikipedia’s explanation of cloud native much more useful than the link to the ublue page about it, or the CNCF’s definition.
I don’t have an accurate sense of how much you’d have to learn about bazzite, so I’ll have trust you on this when it comes to the usage. I personally didn’t have difficulties with other distros, but I’m also not entirely new to the OS world, so my experience may be skewed.
My proximate issue is the pitch, the entry point, the first impression. Evidently, there are people who come across that term and worry that it may mean what “cloud” in many other contexts means: “Your data is somewhere else you have no control over.” And how would they know they’re wrong? If they click on the link, they’re faced with a stack of technical terms they might not understand. Even if they concluded that nothing explicitly says their system will be running in the cloud, how could they trust that conclusion built on unknowns?That insecurity creates an entry barrier for those looking at the website, the impact of which we can’t measure, but that doesn’t have to mean it’s negligible.
The underlying issue, however, is the philosophy behind doubling down on that. If you’re faced with evidence of misunderstandings, people pointing out that barrier, and make a point of not just ignoring it but explicitly saying “Now I want to keep that barrier even more”, that speaks to a mindset that I personally am strongly opposed to. Handing people guides and saying “here, climb over that barrier on your own” doesn’t fully mitigate that.
Hence, in absence of personal experience on the usage, I’ll argue from a position of principle. It’s not a mindset I want to endorse, and so I attempt to steer people away from what I perceived as a higher barrier of entry.
Thin clients connected to some cloud-hosted VM are also installable on many devices. Microsoft 365 is available as apps, but still runs in the cloud (but it doesn’t even pitch that, it just says “all in one place” - the mention of cloud is further down the page, after some other feature pitches). How would I know “native” doesn’t mean “lives in the cloud”? It wouldn’t be the first time marketing fudges terms.
And again, I advise against making assumptions about what becomes apparent to most folks. Most folks aren’t confident in their technical understanding and may err on the side of caution. I’ve tried guiding people through the simplest things, and if there was one detail they weren’t sure they understood, the immediate response was to abort the process for fear of breaking something. A message box pops up and they panic “Aaah what’s happening, what does that mean” because they don’t trust their understanding. I’ve watched people click on some explanation, get confused at some term and resort to fleeing the page back to things they know better…
I have no issue with the term. Technical terms are useful in their respective technical contexts, where people know what they’re a shorthand for. If I talk to a data analyst, I’ll use the term DFM. If I talk to a database engineer, I might use the term denormalisation. But if I talk to a sales manager and use either of those, they’ll stare at me blankly. And that’s what I dislike: Using the term in a context where I feel it’s out of place and is known to cause confusion.
…but may well be the first piece they taste.
But like I said, my issue isn’t with the piece of pie, but the baking practice: “The more people tell me they don’t like raisins, the more I want to add raisins to spite them.” Their pie may otherwise be delicious, but I still wouldn’t recommend that baker.
To put a line under all this, I might give Bazzite a try myself, see how I get along with it, but that won’t change the fact that I find such a spiteful mentality unfit for recommendation.
I believe in the value of user-friendly presentation, not just systems, because the presentation matters to many users. I also believe that the Linux community at large should present itself more helpful and user-friendly, and comments like the one that sparked the thread don’t help that image.
I want to see the Linux ecosystem grow, and I believe that requires a willingness to cater to the least technical users as well. Yes, some amount of learning will be inevitable, but the first contact at least should welcome users as simply and comfortably as possible.
And as a side effect, being more willing to explain and help each other will also help the rest of us. Spite and elitism don’t help anyone.
quarterlife@lemmy.sdf.org 1 week ago
I can tell you right now if you want the Linux ecosystem to grow, the average person is probably downloading the installer and installing it because of word of mouth or mentions in YouTube videos, and not writing all of these words I’m not going to read on lemmy
luciferofastora@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
I have no issue with the word, but with the spiteful mentality of “the more people suggest I change it, the less I want to”.