💾 Archived View for auragem.letz.dev › devlog › 20231204.gmi captured on 2024-05-12 at 15:26:48. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2024-03-21)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Note: This month I have decided to speak out more about the exclusivism within the tech communities. This will involve writing more posts on this topic and releasing older posts that I have kept unpublished until now.
Being in and around the Linux community allowed me to observe several things about the community that I always find interesting, a trend that I am calling "Linux Fundamentalism". Perhaps this label would have been more applicable about 5-10 years ago, because I do believe that it is wearing off more recently as people become disillusioned by Linux, but it unfortunately still applies to a large portion of the community today.
I've spent over a decade with Linux as my daily driver before I got fed up with a subsect the userbase's hostility towards anyone else and their putting Linux on a pedastal of being the perfect "OS" that has no problems whatsoever. It is well known outside of the community that many Linux users like to be hostile towards other Operating Systems and their users, only over time this hostility has become more acceptable as the internet and tech communities have shifted towards Open Source. Linux is seen as following the very fundamentals that they view are strictly opposed to the userbases of other Operating Systems, and so the shift towards Open Source and the downfall of Microsoft have been viewed as a justification of the past and present hostility. It certainly didn't help that Microsoft's attitude towards Linux in the 90s and 2000s was nothing short of hatred, as this gave the Linux community something to come together on and distinguish oneself from. It is this type of hostility between groups and self-distinguishing that can form Fundamentalist religious sects. It is often for survival that this is done at the start, but it continues to fester and grow, causing harm to both the group and those outside of it.
Linux Fundamentalism has many characteristics that parallel religious fundamentalism. There are fundamentals, particularly among those most stringent about GPL and related, those who are often the most extreme in their Fundamentalist approach towards Linux. Linux Fundamentalists are quick to point out, and overexagerate, the flaws of other systems without recognizing the flaws of their own system. The lack of nuance and balance is very apparent as they ignore the lack of standardization that Linux inherently has, being a Kernel and not an Operating System. There certainly was a social hierarchy among much of the Linux userbase, with those who aren't knowledgeable about the manuals being at the lowest rung, and those who can compile Linux (and its userspace tools) themselves being on the highest rung. With all of this taken into account, it is no surprise to me that social conservatism (i.e., rejection of Codes of Conduct, anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments, antisemitism, rejection of social responsibility and justice) has overlapped with the Linux community, or that extreme "social liberalism" (i.e., anarchy, rejection of governance structures or social contracts, antisemitism) also overlaps with the Linux community.
Not all of the community adheres to the dogma of the divine perfection of Linux, however. There was a series called "Linux Sucks" by Bryan Lunduke that would be a presentation of all of the current problems of Linux userspace. But even then, Linux users did not want to hear it, and many of the problems pointed out by those presentations, and many others who criticized Linux for its problems, will continue to go unsolved even today. I was one of the people who tried to defend Linux to outsiders, but this defense became harder and harder as time went on. But this defense mechanism, which started out as a way to survive, becomes the downfall of Linux.
Eventually, I let go of Linux Fundamentalism and entered reality and noticed that Linux and its userspace is just as terrible as every other OS. I've had to deal with wifi driver problems, having to manually compile wifi drivers, theming in Manjaro breaking all of the time, graphics being unsupported or broken, the lack of necessary programs on distros like Solus OS that intentionally limit their software repos, the terrible interfaces of Gnome and Pop OS, the years of tinkering with window managers, terrible and overpriced hardware from Linux system manufacturers like System76, constant bugs and package system breakages, and ultimately, the lack of standardization and the lack of cohesion. When bugs are pointed out, rather than blaming the programmers for poor quality, the users are blamed or led towards workarounds as a justification for the "good design" of the system.
Ten years ago I would have defended Linux, saying how it's not as bad or fragmented as people make it out to be, and that you can actually get alternatives to Microsoft Office or Adobe products, etc. However, the real problem with Linux is not what programs it offers or features it supports. The real problem is its lack of standardization, lack of cohesion, lack of stability, lack of quality, lack of responsibility among developers, and ultimately, the fact that it is a kernel with a userspace constantly in chaotic flux. Linux (and Unix before it) has always been seen as the epitome of "it works for me, so screw you" culture.
Linux is no savior or redeemer.
P.S. I will be ignoring those who decide to cherry pick the approximately 6 decent multiplatform applications that exist on Linux (GIMP, Vim, InkScape, OBS, LibreOffice, and VLC) as proof that Linux is not terrible. This, to me, is very clearly biased. Also, Vim was originally written for the Amiga, and Vi was originally written on the Atari TOS. Not Linux. Not Unix.