the "no elitism" rule that never was...

2021/04/17 1:39 PM (UTC -5) | tildearrow

this Linux community here... is the odd one out. it has a particularly unique "no elitism" rule (probably to stop chaos), but it's actually a disguise...

...for its real meaning, which is "no hating Windows".
this community is The Linux Bar (archived), a Discord guild with this rather unusual rule.
the sad thing is that it is closing, due to a note posted by its owner:

I am closing The Linux Bar in the coming days, because I’m not interested in Linux anymore.
In my opinion, Linux is really not that great when it’s compared to systems like Windows and macOS.
Most of the distributions I tried didn’t perform well on my hardware. There always were some things that didn’t want to work. There were bugs, crashes, freezes... Let’s just say that it was an unstable experience in general.
The community is mostly toxic, and many people there hate on Microsoft or Apple. This is just stupid. I can’t say much here.
As a whole, Linux seems unprofessional. There are hundreds of different distributions curated by individuals, and most of them are badly designed. Various free and open-source programs like LibreOffice or GIMP also aren’t built well. It just becomes a huge mess once you look at the big picture. And, sorry, what? Putting Linux on phones? I don’t see any reason why this should be a viable option.
I assume that you understand my point here. People don’t need 600 distributions. People need one distribution which does things right. And I don’t see Linux going in that direction anytime soon.

excuse me, but wasn't elitism not allowed? so what is this?!
the way you flame Linux sounds like elitism, and yes, you may be the owner but if you are going to do this at least get rid of the "no elitism" rule...

people can't even say "btw i use arch" or talk about favorite distros... but they can say "i hate linux"? i don't understand this mess...

I have always hated this "no elitism" rule, and today I am confessing.
it makes no sense on a community that is a minority (Linux) as it prevents the minority from having discussions...

however, I can partially agree with you though.
Ubuntu in particular used to be very dirty:

• APT being the worst package manager frontend in the world, due to its "held broken packages" feature (and often, if you want the automatic fix it could end up uninstalling your system to fix it). no other package manager does this (ZYpp gives you options, yum and dnf probably do too, and pacman simply refuses to continue if it thinks it will break the system).
• previous versions of Ubuntu (Unity era) had a bug in where icons in the top bar would disappear on every boot. sometimes you don't see the time, sometimes you don't see the volume control, sometimes you don't see the power button.... yeah.
• sometimes Ubuntu simply collapses after installation and the menu bar stops working, Compiz crashes, etc... happens more on the 32-bit builds, but not sure about GNOME era.

and yes, Linux in general has the problem of poor modern/obscure hardware support, but this is due to lack of official manufacturer drivers (even though this may be because Linux strongly dislikes non-mainlined kernel modules, and demands GPL for it)...
Broadcom and NVIDIA are two big issues.
the NVIDIA open-source driver (Nouveau) only works in old cards, and is very slow in the new ones.
on the other hand, the NVIDIA official driver works well but does not adhere to standards like GBM.
the Broadcom open-source driver stalls when trying to upload something.
the Broadcom closed-source driver works, but it fails when you try to connect to a hidden network.... I have talked about this before...

I can also agree with you about stability issues.
I am stuck on Mesa 19.0 because 19.1 onwards has a bug that hangs the AMD card upon recording the screen...
KDE is a minefield, and crashes more often than GNOME... (in fact, KDE actually crashes to log out)

but what I don't agree is... "the Linux community is toxic".
maybe the ones you were in, like The Linux Garden, yeah, that was very toxic like General Discussions...
the truth is... Discord and Linux do not cope together well.
most Linux users prefer traditional methods such as IRC, forums and mailing lists.
very likely you have not seen those... as an example Phoronix has more serious conversations than any Linux Discord community out there...
...and while yes, there is some toxicity, it does not happen often.
so bashing Linux due to its community being apparently toxic (or I mean, your narrow view of it) is like bashing Undertale or Friday Night Funkin' due to its community.

you say Linux does not look professional? you should open your eyes, because GNOME and KDE both look polished, even more than Windows (which has a lot of legacy, and I mean a lot because there are Windows XP icons on Windows 10...), so why do you say this?
again, you should really open your eyes. you can only see LibreOffice and GIMP, which yes, overall those are projects with arcane, outdated architectures, but have you ever seen the alternatives (like Krita)?
LibreOffice is slow unless you have the time to set up OpenCL, and GIMP is Photoshop 10 years (or more) behind.... but seriously have you seen Krita?
in fact, I believe Krita has more users than GIMP as of now since I see it more often even among non-Linux circles...

you say Linux on phones has no reason to exist? then you are the elitist!
the main reason is because there is a technical duopoly dominated by Apple and Google (iOS and Android), and both of them are know for controlling and observing your behavior.

iOS heavily restricts you on what you can do (no sideloading, no open format support, no root/customization options... and I don't get how has it survived for 14 years without dying due to this), and Apple makes big lies about privacy. they claim Apple privacy is a thing, but no, it isn't.
like why do i have to provide a phone number and even my home address just to use the App Store? clear violation of privacy right there...
it's more like, privacy but give us your soul first...
(and honestly, come on, didn't you offload your work to Google and Amazon anyway?)

Android is more open, supports open standards, and the code is open too, but...
...99% of phones run a proprietary build of Android with Google stuff on it, which means.... spyware.
you already know how evil Google is...

do you see now or are you still narrow-sighted?

anyway, fragmentation has been an issue on Linux, but once again who uses those "600 distributions"? most people just use the big contenders (Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL, SLES, openSUSE, Arch Linux, Debian)...

closing a community due to personal opinion is not a good idea... couldn't you have transferred the ownership instead? (no, not Connor please, he's been known for destroying communities by rebuilding them in ways nobody likes...)
i just hope that you rethink about your previous statement and realize how much negative feedback you are getting for this.
if you can't manage it anymore, that is ok but why are you letting it die when there are people who could handle it for you?

this "no elitism" rule goes out of control at times.
we cannot talk about Arch Linux, because when we do your response is "you are an elitist".
we cannot say truth about Windows (how slow it is), because then you think we are elitists.
we cannot say that Linux wallpapers are good, because then you think we are elitists.
however, we can say "linux is horrible", "wine is shit" or stuff like that? what kind of freaking mess is this?!

you know what? your rule is more like "no hating Windows and no using Arch"....

and the worst is, one of the staff members is immature, types in a very unprofessional way (no punctuation) and starts yelling and using sexual slang out of the blue (has improved though, but still)...

I wish you good luck with your next The Windows Bar, but just remember that us Linux users are disappointed!