Comment on Facebook flags Linux topics as 'cybersecurity threats' — posts and users being blocked
SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 4 days agoYes, but many foss is just created with those already in the know about what it does in mind.
FOSS has historically and continues to be unhelpful to many people coming into it. There’s often no beginner level tutorials built in, no easily accessible communities that do not have at least smug asshole that utterly unhelpful saying things like “just fork it” or “it’s not for you”.
So if FOSS ever wants to actually position itself as helpful for the common person it needs a lot more people prepared to write these tutorials etc and build them into the software itself, not just assume internet access.
The biggest one is the terminal. As far as I’m aware it does not come with a tutorial built in ever on any distro. It does not on first opening it say “hey, here are the things you can do” because the developers do not consider that people might be entirely unfamiliar with such things and/or nobody wishes to write one or include it even if it is written.
So yes, foss is good for freedom but at the expense of there often being support built in to get people started, unlike many closed sourced software things. I don’t therefore see how it is useful to people that have no clue how to get started with it, thus often sending them back to the very things FOSS says they should escape.
Wolf314159@startrek.website 4 days ago
Beginner tutorials exist. Have you even tried looking? Linux has better documentation than anything I’ve seen in any other OS. Man pages, help files, and commented configuration files galore in just about every single Linux distro without any Internet needed, but it sounds like you never even bothered to look for them.
Sure, assholes online exist in Linux communities, but they are EVERYWHERE. We’ve got a couple right right here. That doesn’t exactly distinguish FOSS communities from any other.
Generalizations about all of FOSS based on your limited experience with a few distros is just asinine. FOSS is way more than an operating system.
Expecting a machine to hold your hand through your learning is such a weird form of entitlement and an especially weird distinction to make since no other operating system does that to the level you expect either.
Corporations pay for support services. The code is free (as in speech). No one ever claimed that the support was also (or even should be) free. Microsoft support is a joke. Apple support is mostly just a sales scheme. Linux support forums might be hostile to entitled noobs looking for a handout and a quick fix, but they are fucking heros when given a chance to help those who put in the effort to help themselves.
t3rmit3@beehaw.org 4 days ago
Technical documentation != Tutorials. Not even remotely.
“Oh so you use Linux? Name every distro (to prove you ‘put in the effort’ to my standards)”
Sarcasm aside, Lime Buzz is completely correct; FOSS as an ecosystem has cultivated an air of ahem techno-elitism, and that severely undermines its actual usefulness as a tool of individual freedom or certainly resistance. If a tool requires a bunch of X (time, money, base knowledge, etc) in order to utilize, it’s not going to be useful to people who do not have that resource to spend on it. Which is going to be the majority of any given group. And that has really made it as an ecosystem much less important than many other concerns. Individual projects can still be important, but Linux is certainly not going to save us from Authoritarianism.
Corporations may unfortunately be people, but people are certainly not corporations, and shouldn’t be expected to pay for everything corporations do.
If you believe that Linux actually helps people- that it materially improves their lives over being trapped in a predatory tech world built by for-profit entities who are happy to sell their customers out to a fascist government- then you are conceptualizing the relationship between Linux evangelists and new users incorrectly. We’re not providing sales and tech support in that case, we’re providing them aid. And aid workers don’t ask people to show how much they’ve tried to help themselves before offering them help.
And if you don’t think Linux actually aids peoples’ lives, then you just agree with Lime Buzz that
SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 4 days ago
Thanks for explaining what I was getting at better than I am able to currently, genuinely.
SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 4 days ago
Man pages are not good for beginners. Help pages, I am not sure if they exist within the OS for such things I mentioned such as the terminal or not.
I was being specific so as to avoid it blowing up into multiple things, but yes there being no tutorials built in is common to many FOSS things I have come across.
I disagree wholeheartedly with your assertion that people should not be handheld through the learning process or that it’s entitlement to expect or even want it, if we want people to learn and get better at things then such things are useful and needed but they have to start somewhere and having a machine ‘hold their hand’ is better than them getting frustrated imo.
So what if no other OS does it to the degree I think it should? FOSS could prove itself to be better by doing what other OSs don’t, but you seem to be suggesting it shouldn’t and that is something I genuinely don’t understand. If we want people to use it as I often see FOSS obsessives tell people yet do absolutely nothing to support them in doing so, just call their closed source software shit, tell them to move to open source and then are like “lol, byeeeee” if they do and then have no idea how to, especially if they do so just to not be berated by them again.
I disagree that people earnestly looking for help should be called ‘entitled noobs’ and even if they are, so what?
I’d rather help them so they can move on to learning on their own. This is exactly the attitude and viewpoint I was addressing, foss people cannot see how it benefits us all to help even those that just want a ‘quick fix’ to their problems as it is more than possible in a few years time those people might be even more helpful as they remember how they were treated in the face of their confusion about it.
I don’t agree only that those people put in the effort themselves should be helped, even if it’s indirectly, writing a beginner level tutorial and then linking it is more useful and nets more use to foss than just saying “no figuring it out yourself” in the long term and I genuinely do not understand why people think that ‘handouts’ are bad if they get a good result in the future or at least get the person to stop asking.
I’ve actually written many tutorials for things and plan on writing more in the future, I’ve helped many people with software both closed and open source, so yeah, I have some experience there and completely understand people’s frustration with the general foss community when they cannot get help. I’ve been that person many times too and so decided to do something about it, I genuinely hope others do too so that we can all grow together whether people start from ‘entitled’ roots or not.
irvinefantasyno@beehaw.org 4 days ago
Linux community has been better at being helpful, though, as the years passed.
…but still freakin’ insufferable.
Lime Buzz has a point here.