The Victorians were just plain crazy. Most of the time, anyway. (Though they were probably right about pockets.)

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That tracks. But damn, do I ever think “wow this sucks” when I have to deal with Winblows.

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Yep. I love doing wacky or interesting graphical shit to make my computer look neat, but I also like for the important stuff to be stable day to day for common tasks. Which is why Debian based distros are the best ones.

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Yes, that does track. I do not like terminals regardless of the task, I’m very much a visual type with anything Computer. I’m just saying, terminal junkies will do stupidly inconvenient things just to have done the thing in a terminal.

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Every OS sucks.

Linux sucks with a whole community behind it and no consistency in GUIs.

Mac sucks expensively inside a walled garden.

Windows sucks and blows and spews AI slop.

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I’m probably the same as you. I like computers, I like technical stuff, a command line is intimidating but not scary, I don’t hate troubleshooting and fixing my own computer when I inevitably break something (well, I hate troubleshooting less than I hate trusting anyone else with my computer), and I got into Linux for political reasons (one, freedom and community are important to me as a communist, two, I don’t feel comfortable using products from US companies, if I can avoid it, at this time) and went with something based on Debian.

The difference is that I’d never used Linux before when I found out it existed and was already thinking that it’d be nice if I could ditch Windows because I really don’t want to rely on US corpos anymore.

Yeah. If you don’t want to treat your computer like a project car, you want it to be like a reliable mom van, you want Debian based stability, not the cool bleeding edge stuff.

Though, I will say, a spare computer to tinker with and bleeding edge stuff does cost less than most mechanical projects. (My dad has multiple project cars. My mum yells at him about it in front of the rest of the family. At least he does tend to sell them for a small profit when he gets them running smoothly, he likes doing the project and making money off it more than he actually likes any of the busted up cars he buys as projects. My mum mostly just doesn’t like all the space they take up.)

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Many of which don’t even have a CLI command.

Anything that can’t yet be done in a terminal, someone will eventually figure out how to do with a CLI or at most a TUI. Because terminal junkies are weird and because Linux lets you do that kind of thing more than any other OS does.

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Omg that sounds adorable! 😍🐧

It is. It’s really cute. I have to admit, a little fluffy thing to pet and squish that’s always on hand does serve a good sensory purpose. I initially just got it because I wanted a bigger and easier to grab zipper pull and penguins are cute and iykyk, but it’s actually useful, not just cute and a community in-joke.

Yeah, that does track. Honestly, that’s just any broad community centered around a thing that respects user freedom more than other available options, you’re gonna get the far left and the far right involved. You just see it more with Linux because there’s so many people involved that the politically extreme groups seem larger. But that’s the price of freedom and liberation. If we can use a thing like that, then there’s also going to be annoying right-libertarians who use it for political reasons.

For me, I had never used or even heard of Linux before the combined political pressure, hyperfixation sparked when I found out it was a thing, and just general dissatisfaction with Windows after so many consecutive duds and stinkers, made me try it just to say I’d used it once, and then I just didn’t see a reason to stop using it.

And tbh if Windows 10 had been good, not just less bad than 8, and if 11 hadn’t been a third stinker in a row, maybe I wouldn’t have been so willing to try something new. So I guess I also have Microslop to thank for this.

Yep. “Well, I like this little goober.”

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Indeed. There’s a stereotype that commies use Linux for a reason. (Which causes a lot of trouble in the broad political tent that the FOSS world inherently is, but your average not that technical anti-communist nut job doesn’t know about it. My dad would question my brother three times about his potential interest in this stuff before he’d think to ask the Stalinist who obviously only has a little stuffed penguin on her purse zipper because they don’t make teddy bears that size.) I’d like to say I got into it initially as a political protest action, or that I was fed up with Winblows and its privacy and security issues, and those things are true, I even got distro recommendations from a commie site a lot like this place, in a political community rather than a technology one, but honestly, I’d gotten hyperfixated on Linux and I had to mess around with a few distros myself to satiate it, and if you’ve known a few neurodivergent people, you know that some kinds of hyperfixations just get worse when you try to just ignore it and do nothing about it.

And then the mystery and hyperfixation was gone, but I still like Linux better than Winblows. It’s just a better choice for me. It’s an opsec decision that costs me nothing and a political protest against corporate monopoly that I enjoy and doesn’t feel like Complicated Party Work or something out of Lenin’s pamphlets, it’s just making a choice I’d prefer anyway. Sometimes I really like the “it’s about FREEDOM!” attitude that comes from the commies and the right-libertarians who use it equally, sometimes that feels like you people are all ten years old in a bad way, but I get it and it’s neat. Plus, I get a genuinely more pleasant computer experience out of it. More personal benefit than I get out of most things I do for political reasons or nebulous “freedom”.

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For Microslop to make something that doesn’t blow, they’d need to make a fan. (I’ve heard “doesn’t suck - vacuum cleaner” a zillion times, I hope mine’s more original.) (They really would make a fan that doesn’t blow and a vacuum cleaner that doesn’t suck, because nothing Microslop makes ever works.)

Linux may suck some of the time, but Winblows… well, blows, all the time.

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I suppose as terminal Cool Stuff goes, it is pretty neat. And tbf, you probably don’t need a more full featured WM or DE if you’re just going to use it to open and tile a few terminal emulator windows anyway.

Let me guess, you’re a massive terminal junkie?

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Cute rat, must boop lil rat nosie.

👉🐭

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That’s… not a DE.

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You are absolutely right.

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Yeah, I’m pretty similar. I use the particular Linux distro I do because it works and it gets out of my way and lets me use my computer the way I want to. Which Windows no longer does. I have nothing against people who choose to use it, I’m just no longer willing to fight with it myself and lately not very happy with the company that makes it. I see distro wars or dissing folks who still find Windows to suit their computing needs as utterly pointless, counterproductive, and antisocial behaviour.

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I do find that 7s can be a little annoying about their pet projects, but that’s to be expected considering how many computer nerds are autistic folks with a special interest in this stuff.

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Yeah… I care a lot more about socialism than computer operating systems, and I know my leftism alone exhausts people’s patience with me. Otherwise I probably would talk people’s ears off about how there is a solution to their constant Windows frustrations.

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Huh. Guess Debian really is the Universal Operating System that’ll run on anything.

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