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I first installed Linux in 1995, before I had a second computer where I could look for help. Compared to that experience today’s situation is paradise. So you won’t hear me complain.
Oh, I remember that. Red hat 2.0. Where you had to download the source code for all of the floppy discs, compile them, and then write all of the floppies. I remember it was 7 or 9 floppy discs, 13 if you wanted printer drivers.
It wasn’t until Red Hat 2.5 that they had pre-compiled floppy images you could download.
Today’s linux situation is paradise compared to gaming on windows any time before 2015. I still remember having to keep multiple different nvidia driver installers ready for launching just to match what game I wanted to play.
I’ve never had to do that and I’ve used plenty of Nvidia cards, assuming we’re talking Windows.
Same here. I don’t know wtf that dude had going on.
Whatever distro you’re using is literally the worst one.
Not only is it the absolute worst, but you’re also using it wrong
also you shouldn’t use that desktop environment that you prefer
And actually you shouldn’t use a desktop environment in the first place as you should be editing all config files manually as well as running your own compositor
I know. I purposely chose Kinonite because once installed, I don’t do anything but install a few flatpacks, and then I never need to do anything more. I will never learn anything, nor will I ever need to look at a man page.
The bomb is atomic
Using flatpaks is using Linux wrong
Of course it is! That’s why I use them! Well, layering is using atomic distros wrong.
What a weird comment. That’s like saying using the window wipers is using the car wrong. Sure you can go without but when your shit crashes because you thought you were cool not using them you learn they serve an important purpose even though it may not be what seems to be the primary goal.
Satire in my satire thread?
It’s more likely than you think.
works on <other distro>
I feel like someone tired of hearing “it works on my computer” is how NixOS came about
Also Docker and OVA.
Docker’s like “well why don’t we just ship the client your computer then?”
Dude, we got two machines shipped to us because the other team wasn’t able to make the installers function. It was electromagnetic microscope simulators, so the team wasn’t noobs. Got 2 fat pcs.
Worked!
What’s an electromagnetic microscope simulator? For reference, I work in electron optics.
I use SEMs, BTW.
I know people hate hearing that line, but when I have done technical support it is highly useful to know if it works properly on other machines.
Preferably identical hardware is a good starting point, but if a solution is working fine on one machine but not another it can steer you toward other client issues.
Some user complaints of " it doesnt work on my machine" have been resolved to:
- user modified, or didn’t input, the correct environment variable.
- user is running a version of app not certified for that hardware config.
- user actually has no clue how computers work and didn’t realize the app looking for shared network locations only works if you are on the network. Or app needing a license server can’t work if it can’t find the server
- user isn’t understanding the requirements for the app output, so not providing the necessary input can’t achieve proper output results.
I tried NixOS after many years on Debian. I cannot go back, at least not on my server.
Why’s that?
Debian is great, I love it. But the ease of which I can repair my system when I break it is the main reason to stay. I made an error in my hardware config and I just had to use the previous generation to get back to a working state. After that, I could take my time to fix the issue without the server being down.
This whole everything is in config files is also very appealing, even though there is a lot to learn to get to the same level of knowledge (https://nix.dev/ helps there).
As a daily-driver of nixos: basically yes.
Can you explain the nixOS part?
The ethos of NixOS is if a program runs on one computer using Nix it will run on any computer running Nix.
Okay but like that’s almost every other distro as of 2021
The party trick of NixOS is declaring your whole system in a huge config file. If you want someone to get the same system, you just throw your config at them and it works*.
manual? website? all information is on a badly organised slightly hostile discord server
Not even close, Linux users have been creating documentation long before Discord existed, and will continue to do so long after Discord dies. In my experience one of the most consistently great places to learn how to perform various tasks is the Arch Linux Wiki. It’s extremely helpful and relevant even if you’re not using Arch.
If I were trying to get info about Linux on Discord, I’d probably find myself getting upset too. It’s almost like Discord just sucks or something.
my personal experience with nobara was like this. i couldnt find info when looking for something
disclaimer: i might just have been to stupid
I find this to be one of those memes that’s not actually based on facts but on feelings. If you ask a question that could have been answered by a quick search, or asked a very vague question, then sure. Otherwise, I find that the linux and FOSS community as a whole tends to be extremely helpful and patient. Yes, there are assholes, but overall the community is full of people willing to help.
Yeah, I’ve found everyone to be kind, patient and helpful to me since day 1 - not a single bitchy reply that I can remember. Been using Linux for about 3 years now.
Yeah i like to think if you’re smart and ask good questions people are happy to help
The people might be great if you’re chatting on discord or something, but if you’re just trying to Google the answer, results tend to get a lot of variations of these answers.
Yup, there are a lot of old forum posts that basically boil down to:
Lost user (0 comments/1 posts): Hey, I’m having a weird error and haven’t been able to find anything about it. Sorry if this is a newbie question, but I’ve already tried searching for it and have come up empty-handed:
{Detailed error description}
{Detailed instructions to recreate error}
{Debug level logs showing the error}Forum mod (1,234,567 comments/65,535 posts): {Insert any/all of the following: RTFM/This could be fixed with a simple command (without posting what the command is)/It works on my machine/Just run
sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /and go back to Windows, Skill issue, Duplicate post (without linking to the post that has an answer), etc…} Closing this post.if you’re just trying to Google the answer, results tend to get a lot of variations of these answers.
Skill issue, then.
Your search skills suck. I usually get very helpful and relevant results when I search for a problem … because I know how to search for it specifically and precisely.
Well, yes. There are many different answers to any specific question because there are many ways to accomplish the same task. That doesn’t mean that one way is correct and the rest are wrong. It is up to you, the end user, to decide which of the correct answers suits you best. If you don’t know, pick one and move on until you have to revisit the solution.
Except none of the answers in the meme are right or viable options to solve whatever problem, especially not for people trying to search up the answer later. Somebody might have given a useful answer once, but that one useful result gets drowned by these non-answers.
”Why do you want to do that?”
Tbf, those are sometimes valid responses, the new user just doesn’t realize what they’re asking is dumb, and it’s exhausting to deal with when a bit of reading would solve the problem or show them what they’re asking is impossible.
I used to be a mod on a forum for a fairly popular free program, and we generally treated even that like an information availability problem. Yes, we had an FAQ (and yes, sometimes even still people wouldn’t read it), but when there were a ton of similar questions that were all answered in the FAQ, we figured that meant that the FAQ needed a rewrite for better SEO.
Ultra-rare sane person randomly appears on the internet
I’m not even joking, that’s literally the best compliment I’ve received all month. Thank you.
This. I had an issue a couple months ago. I posted on the distro’s form with a much info as I could provide and some real smart people gave me a ton of help really quickly.
Knowing how to ask and not being abrasive is really helpful.
Lol, posting what you read, tried, error codes, and what’s installed and your hardware gives you a very high chance on getting a civil reply. It shows you’re trying.
One should always expect new users to ask dumb questions, after all, they are new at this. They haven’t yet learned how to speak the language properly to know how to ask the smart questions. Teaching involves answering the same “simple” questions over and over. Somebody did it for you back in the day. And somebody did it for me.
Not being able to teach and guide a newbie is a skill issue on your part just as much as their not knowing how to ask smart questions is.
I’m not really talking about teaching and guiding though.
If you look at the meme, one of the responses is something like “PRs welcome.”
I think that’s appropriate in certain circumstances.
You are correct, there is nothing wrong with a lack of knowledge or dumb questions. I’m referring more to how they ask their dumb questions.
Some newbies come with hostility, pride, and entitlement, not ignorance.
They request new features, say something sucks bc of blah blah blah, and then get mad at people responding rudely back. But what else should we respond with in this kind of situation? They aren’t looking to learn. They are looking to degrade projects, users, and maintainers.
They aren’t looking for answers; they’re looking to be mad about something and confirm their opinion that “Linux sucks” or some other such bias.
So yeah, when someone comes humbly even with bad assumptions, absolutely correct and guide, but there’s no point guiding people who don’t actually want guidance, ya know? Pearls before swine
So sometimes these aren’t bad responses
Imagine if I had taught math to school kids with that attitude. They ALL had attitudes about math and learning in general.
With the poor quality of the search engine results and the fact that information expires I very much disagree with this line of thought. Bit of reading solves the problem when you know what to read and understand what was written. It’s very easy to spend hours reading all sorts of things (because you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for) and then discover half of what you read is now 3-5 years old information and no longer relevant.
I know how easy it is because I spent days troubleshooting why my USB wifi stick wouldn’t work. Most of the information I found was from when you needed to manually add the driver and was no longer relevant. What relevant information I did find, nothing matched the issue I was having. In the end I didn’t care to bother anyone with a 5 year old wifi dongle because I’d probably run into people like you who’d tell me to RTFM before even bothering to understand the actual problem. Instead I solved the problem by buying a new dongle, one that I knew had been tested and worked. But someone else might have a far more expensive piece of hardware that they can’t just replace on a whim.
Let people ask their questions and if it really takes just a bit of reading why not take that 5 minutes to point them to the right place? How many days do they have to waste of their own before they’re allowed to ask their stupid question that you could answer in 5 minutes?
Next time, install Cinnamon Mint !
But I have Hannah Montana Linux. What do?
Is there a golden retriever labelled “random person on IRC with answers to all questions, writes a driver for you so you do t have to enter that house”
Me trying to get LLM tools to work.
I swear to god those things are fucking HORRIBLE. They all feel fucking vibecoded and untested. Customer wanted some generative AI thing working, hired me, well pays the bills so I gotta do it, and the pip install ALONE already resulted in dependency problems and when I somehow resolved those, turns out that multiple packages are just missing. And when you ask someone, it’s like: “Uh it works for me” well thank you.
Just testing your fucking application before you toss it out in the wild is the least I expect from vibecoding retards.
Me trying to get LLM tools to work.
Well there’s your first problem.
If customers want it, I gotta do it. Can’t force my beliefs and ethics on them or I’m not getting paid lmao.
“I might be homeless and starved to death, but at least I didn’t work with LLMs!”
I just get annoyed with questions that a simple 5 minute search will solve.
“What distro is best for gaming?”
“Will linux run on my (insert random PC specs)?”
“Why does (insert Windows/MacOS program) not work on the linux? Linux is crap then!”
“Recommend me a free antivirus software for linux”
“Why does Arch not work on my PC from the early 2000’s?”
I actually blocked someone over something like this =w=
An ex friend that kept bothering me for linux help, and would refuse to look at or read any source. Literally got so annoyed of them asking something, me telling them what to do, telling them the tools that can do it, and even linking sources that explain the tools, and they still message me with some rudimentary thing that’s literally in the first paragraph of the step by step guide breaking down each argument etc.
Some people just don’t want to try or be competent, they just want to shout “I don’t know computers” and make you read out the same steps you just sent them
There’s a phenomenon called “learned helplessness” where people simply don’t realize they’re capable of doing such things for themselves. They hit the limits of their knowledge and instinctively look to another human for answers, failing to realize they’re capable of taking the very same steps as the person they’re asking.
I’m not making excuses for them, just telling you so you know what to research to understand it better. It’s one of those things, once you know what it is, you start to notice it everywhere.
Im very aware =w= I just got tired of putting on with it, especially with the way they were treating me like on call tech support expecting me to forego my plans or use my free time to assist with whatever, whenever
At some point even if you know why someone acts they way they do, you just have to throw in the towel and look out for your own health
I just get annoyed with questions…
Oh, no! That’s terrible.
Context
i’d rather die than read a man page
Tldr is zoomer man pages and I love them
There are some useful manual pages I like to use, and there’s some that exist just so there’s a manual pages
i get that man pages can be useful sometimes but what in the world is that layout, maybe it’s just me not getting used to them but why write them in such a hard to understand way?
It’s a vestigial structure from Bell Lab’s Unix documentation which prioritizes brevity and precision. It’s like mathematics on Wikipedia. It’s always written by some math nerd in terms that only fellow math graduate students will understand at a minimum.
I guess in the case of Linux it also came about because the people using it and developing it were fluent in it, so man pages can follow a rigid structure with extreme amounts of jargon. It also made it easier to compress and transfer in the early internet days as a side effect?
At a time it was barely reasonable to assume anyone reading them would understand the undefined syntax they use.
If you’re a ‘new linux user’ then your only usecase is opening a browser and thats pretty much it. No PR needed for that lol.
$ man man
A miserable little pile of documentation.
