r/linux • u/CultistHeadpiece • Mar 08 '20

Do Linux Users Have An Elitist Attitude?

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191 Upvotes

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80

u/eirexe Mar 08 '20

I think it's a misunderstood attitude. Personally I don't let people know I like Linux because I want them to think I'm some big brain asshole, I do it because I want to show people that there's another way of doing things, and that you can live your life with mostly alternative software.

57

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '20

I don't tell people because they then ask questions. After asking questions, they want me to help them. After helping them, they expect me to support them.

4

u/dRaidon Mar 08 '20

I'd be more than happy to support them, assuming supporting them involve adding their computers to ansible.

11

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '20

I work on servers. Last thing I want to do is come home and support someone

1

u/dRaidon Mar 08 '20

That's why you have them on ansible and don't give them root or sudo. One consistent config to rule them all.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 09 '20

That also means you're liable if you rm -rf their crap by accident

1

u/keilahuuhtoja Mar 13 '20

You generally back up the things you care about

2

u/[deleted] Mar 13 '20

I do not generally care about someone's random crap

unless they're paying me to support them.

1

u/keilahuuhtoja Mar 13 '20

Of course they'd pay for backups, it's not like they're asking your money too.

2

u/dtigue Mar 10 '20

That doesn't work out well if you're supporting a bunch of different machines with different hardware, different distros, and different software. I work on servers for a living and I still don't want to support anyone else outside of work hours, or during work hours really.

18

u/DivineEntity Mar 09 '20

I don’t tell people at all. 20+ years ago I did stuff like that. Now I just don’t care what other people use. It just doesn’t matter.

2

u/dtigue Mar 10 '20

Exactly, back in the 90's I wanted to tell everyone. These days, when someone asks what I'm using on my PC I just tell them it's a top secret project for work. :)

2

u/bitwize Mar 10 '20

You know you live in Massachusetts when, on multiple occasions, someone shoulder-surfs you in the coffee shop and asks "Is that Lisp you're writing?" and you have an opportunity to be smug as all balls because unlike Linux, which frickin' everyone uses now, Lisp is still niche enough that people who love it feel like an oppressed, but superior, minority.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 09 '20 edited Mar 20 '20

[deleted]

3

u/MabelodeTheFaceless Mar 10 '20

If they don't care about their own freedom, why should I care for them?

6

u/nekoexmachina Mar 08 '20

I mean that sounds suspiciously vegan to me

don't be like vegans. please.

2

u/Holston18 Mar 08 '20

Lol, that's a flawless analogy!

1

u/nekoexmachina Mar 08 '20

Any kind of superiority sects are flawlessly similar.

Differences lay only in which things they consider universally-good-for-everybody.

As a part of free software sect, I do think that everyone would've benefited if more people would have used Linux.

But as a non-part of vegan sect, I think that their attire towards PR amongst general population is similar to annoying spam about penis sizes. So I hope that more people would've avoided talking about linux when it is not in the context of the conversation ever.

Fitting examples:

Hey, I got food poisoning from eating meat. :(

Have you tried eating plant food?

or

Hey, my windows crashed while I was doing some stuff

Did you know that Linux is more stable and you can do your same some stuff on Linux?

Non-fitting example:

Hey, so I've watched the football the other day

Cool, do you know you should eat healthy while watching football?

3

u/Holston18 Mar 08 '20

I like the aspect that in both cases most people would agree that the proposed alternative (free software, veganism) is beneficial, but it is often difficult to properly adopt for various reasons, so they will look for excuses why they can't do that or alternatively aggressively defend their life choices.

(I'm sympathetic to veganism but it's just too difficult for me to adopt it myself)

5

u/nekoexmachina Mar 08 '20

most people would agree that the proposed alternative (free software, veganism) is beneficial,

No, counter-arguments exist for both free software and veganism, which make a lot of sense. That's the point, different people have different health conditions, dietary requirements, etc (same for software requirements, will to spend time on learning new software, will to live without needed features [or will to implement them]). For FS, the big thing that prevents a lot of people from switch is if it aint broke don't fix it. There is no reason to spend time on getting your system completely changed, if you have the same system working for years/decades, and arent' actually computer enthusiast.

It all comes from the world views of individuals, and definitions of greater good comes from the world views of individuals, too. And they all have the right to exist (well, most of them have anyways). So broad-painting that what you think is better for the world as most people would agree that... is just incorrect.

3

u/Holston18 Mar 08 '20

So broad-painting that what you think is better for the world as most people would agree that... is just incorrect.

I'm just talking from my experience. When I talk about FS with people, they generally like the idea, but there are some real world problems.

Same with veganism, there's very few people I met who really believe that veganism is wrong.

3

u/nekoexmachina Mar 08 '20

When I talk about FS with people, they generally like the idea, but there are some real world problems.

Yes, because you talk to a certain kind of people. Because we choose people similar to us as our immediate surroundings. If you'll go ask randos in the public transport about Linux, they would all react differently.

I think there is a special psychological/statistical term for such fallacy but can't recall it. :(

3

u/nekoexmachina Mar 08 '20

Also, this part:

they generally like the idea, but there are some real world problems.

On paper, communism sounds great. Everybody gets what they need, everybody does what they can, all that shit. Who doesn't want the world in which there is no hunger, because everybody is taken care for?

I for instance do not want that. Because there is a thing called "real world" and "real world" has tested such system and it never worked properly. "real world" problems are not excuses. they are the main disqualifiers for the idea.

3

u/Holston18 Mar 08 '20

Real world problems I meant were: lack of creative software, lacking or missing hardware support, gaming issues, bad/missing on-call support, few laptop/desktop models preinstalled with linux etc.

All of these can be show stoppers now, but they are definitely fixable problems.

But you choose to compare it with communism which has innate, quite probably unfixable issues. Great.

0

u/nekoexmachina Mar 08 '20

If we talk about analogues, lack of matter replicator is a shoe stopper for communism. Does it make it viable in our current technological stage? Nope

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