I feel like 75% of Mastodon are people talking about Linux. If you don’t care about Linux you feel alienated. I enjoy Mastodon and Lemmy, but the lack of more diverse subjects gets to me if I browse for too long.
Update: I took your advice and purchased a laptop for Linux, and now I care about it! Problem solved.
have u tryed like, starting to care about linux?
Honestly, fediverse and my steam deck have me hyped. My next build will be Linux based.
B A S E D
Their username says no.
“Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and saviour Linux Torvalds?”
Have you “tryed like” not forcing your preferred operating system onto every internet stranger you meet?
As someone who considers themselves a tech enthusiast (through broad optics- I don’t work in IT or have a tech based job or even know how to code, and has admittedly never used Linux), I spent an hour today trying to install tor on my Chromebook which supports Linux and finally gave up. Unfortunately for the average user, Linux isn’t even close to user-friendly
Tor is an application and technically doesn’t even has much to do with Linux itself, except that it also runs on it. Where you using a guide for installing and if so which one?
Chrome OS makes installing Linux applications way more difficult than it is on most other Linux distros.
There’s a lot of other stuff here too, granted Star Trek is 60% of my feed - but it reminds me of the old internet so I’m content.
What else do you like?
I’m mostly into gaming and tech.
Just gonna go out on a limb and say most cheap tech projects are probably running on some open source code.
You are limiting yourself a little bit by not being at least slightly interested in it.
Classic Linux propagandist move
To point out reality?
“I like tech, but I don’t actually give a shit about how any of it works” is a really weak take.
There’s a few specific gaming communities. They’re small, but I can say growing daily. I’m actually a mod of [email protected] for example. If one doesn’t exist and you feel up to it, make a community too. I’m sure there are people who are interested. The communities are small, but through nurturing we can grow them up to a nice size.
Check out https://lemmyverse.net/communities, I don’t know how many are active but it only takes one person to make it active!
Your parents: we’re content creators.
Have you tried installing Linux?
Yes, yes. Oh, yes. You must try the Linux.
It’s the FOSS equivalent of have you turned it off and on again?
I would say just subscribe to stuff you like and don’t doom scroll for hours. A 15 min session is all you need to catch up for a day in your interests. Also make some posts in stuff you like and care about.
Totally. While I do want the Fediverse to grow, I have to admit enjoying that the scroll is not quite endless. It really highlights how much garbage we encounter on a daily basis that exists purely to distract and entertain us since I don’t really feel like I’m having FOMO or anything but I’m scrolling way less.
Twitter was designed to be addictive, whereas Mastodon was specifically designed to not be addictive. That’s why scrolling Mastodon feels so boring after a while.
I am subscribed to a shit ton of Linux related communities, but seems like I don’t need to ;D
Feels like we’re both getting the wrong content then. 🙃 I do care about Linux and barely see anything about it here.
Same. I get a LOT of news because of what’s going on in the world and some tech stuff. Almost none of it is Linux (and I like it).
and I like it
Get out of here!
Jokes aside… Lemmy has been great for world and tech news! Feels like I don’t need to check my RSS app, or Reddit in order to scratch that itch.
Don’t know how, it’s in every thread and community regardless of Linux affiliation.
There’s people praising Linux in this thread, about how Linux is everywhere.
This shits gonna kill the fediverse.
For Mastodon, you gotta find the hashtags about the things you care about.
For Lemmy, you gotta put in the work to raise the communities you care about. If there are existing communities, post and comment in them. If there isn’t a community about your interest - and if you’re willing - create and maintain them. The people will come.
I’m all in on the fediverse, and want to watch it flourish.
For Lemmy: Go to “all” and sort by New Comments. Find additional communities you like. Subscribe. Comment. Vote. Post. Now your front-page is more for you.
I can’t wait for the weighted algo in the new release, which increases the weighting of posts from smaller communities so they don’t get drowned out. In the meantime, I guess I’ll look at more risa memes ;)
Didn’t know they’re working on implementing that, sounds like a very good change. I noticed that smaller communities kinda get “drowned out” by bigger ones as well.
What other federated platforms do you look into? Most of the the reddit communities I use to be a part of are super tiny on lemmy.
There’s Pixelfed which is a fediverse alternative to Instagram, but I don’t use it currently as I don’t share my photography online as LCP.
Peertube is a YouTube alternative but I’m not using that currently as well.
Other than them, there are other fediverse platforms that are basically Mastodon-like or Lemmy-like.
Things are fairly wonky right now, but I believe with time, effort and funding many if not all of the fediverse’s issues can be resolved.
Which Lemmy communities are you a part of that are currently tiny? I can lend a hand in posting/commenting there and keeping them active.
#mosstodon or bust
I’m a particular fan of #LichenSubscribe
Fear not, there are also extreme political discussions.
Political extremity, Linux, and LGBT… I can’t think of any other major category of the fediverse. Memes don’t count, because they’re usually conveying one of the 3
Fibre crafts is popping off on Mastodon tbh
Awesome. Shit like that is the sort of thing that eventually winds up building an interesting space. Like don’t get me wrong, I’m a gay communist who uses linux, I like what’s here, but I want to see other people’s hobbies here. I want variety enough to draw more people so I can stumble into something I didn’t even realize was cool
You missed furries.
Before Lemmy, the last time I had touched Linux was back in the 90s, when it was Red Hat on a dozen+ floppies, minimal GUI, and almost all command line. It wasn’t bad, I just didn’t feel like working that hard and there weren’t all that many training resources for it, so I just slid back into to Mac and Windows. No loss.
But over time things change, and I’m not much of a Mac user anymore – their hardware is far too overpriced to keep reinvesting in it, IMO – and after aging out of regular updates on the last version of OS X that will run on my 2016 MacBook Pro, and then trying and failing to build a fully operational hackintosh on a newer Intel NUC, I just gave up and went back to Windows.
But now I’m here on Lemmy and it’s all Linux all the time, oh and Microsoft sucks but lets talk about Linux again, which was a bit much at first. But the truth is that I just hate Windows 10 anyway, always have, and am only using it because it’s pretty much the default now. So I guess I started listening.
After a few weeks of this Lemmy non-stop Linux
promotiondiscussion, I decided to load it up on a 13 year old MacBook with minimal hardware and see if it was any better than what I remembered. If that old MacBook can run it, I thought, maybe I’ll just set it up as a spare. It’s free, why not?Man, it screams. This is nothing like the Linux I remember from the 90s. Holy shit. Even setting up a Linux printer from a Windows share is almost effortless, and I have never been able to do that with only Windows machines. These are full-fledged, well-supported, well-documented operating systems with great video, audio and even peripheral support. And almost all free and open source (I haven’t paid for anything yet myself, though). I was shocked.
So now I’m trying out Linux distros one by one, wiping and then loading another, seeing what there is to see, and when I’ve tried out all the distros I want to try, I’ll install one and bring the rest of my hardware over to Linux. And not only that, but hardware that was just sitting on a shelf collecting dust is now back in full service, and I can think about things I would not have spent money on before, like building a Plex server or a pihole, because now I have a bunch of available hardware. Win/win/win.
TL;DR: People are praising Linux for a reason. Tune out if you want, but don’t be surprised if it ends up working on you anyway, lol.
Favorite distros so far? For someone who doesn’t want to touch the terminal.
I am absolutely loving Zorin Core as a no-command-line, works out of the box Linux OS.
I don’t mind a bit of command line, but I don’t think I’ve had to open Terminal at all in Zorin, and I’ve had it loaded for about three weeks. Printer installs were painless (HP), and what Windows support there is for Linux is largely built in already. I’m not a gamer, so I couldn’t tell you about that, but so far it’s superb and it has worked for me straight out of the box, everything intuitive and easy to find. There’s also a paid version of Zorin, but I haven’t decided on a distro yet so there’s no point.
Mint (Cinnamon desktop) was fault-free and zippy as hell on minimal hardware, and Pop! OS was also no command line for me, but I didn’t play with it very much and intend to reinstall it when I have more time because I don’t think I gave it a decent shake. (At this point I’m not only looking for distros for myself but also for the BIL, who was all, “This can resurrect old hardware? Tell me more!” so I am making and testing LiveUSBs for both of us. I didn’t want to give him a LiveUSB for something I’d never installed myself so I wiped Pop! OS to give him something else he was interested in at the time.)
I’ve tested over a dozen so far, but those are the most noob-friendly, command-line-free distros I have touched so far, if that helps.
Gentoo, you never half to look at a terminal in that distro. Just white text scrolling on a black backdrop for infinity! The people who like to sit through the end credits of a movie would be ecstatic.
Gentoo is great for two things: Firstly, learning about all the parts that go into a Linux system and how they interact. Secondly, typing
emerge worldinto a shell and feeling like a god raising the continents from the ocean.
I tried Linux for years but always have to go to the terminal for something. There’s a reason it’s a default application on every distribution. The CLI can be daunting for the unfamiliar but it’s actually very powerful.
I love the CLI as it’s more powerful and efficient, but to be honest i can’t rememeber a time when i actually needed it for something basic. Browsing (including mail and movies), editing documents, printing, and most changes in configuration can be done through the graphical interface.
I’m so glad I joined lemmy because it made me try out linux too. Haven’t touched my windows partition for months. Used nobara for a while, didn’t play nice with nvidia. Mint has been working almost perfectly.
It’s actually amazing how far it has come even for someone who mained Linux all the way to where it has gotten. I put all my family oldies that aren’t able to tech support themselves on Kinoite and it was seamless even for my grandparents and I haven’t had to service the computers since. No more complaints about things taking longer than before to load either. I wish I had this 20 years ago.
Kinoite Fedora? This OS?
https://fedoraproject.org/kinoite/
I tried Fedora but it was a couple of the built-in spins, KDE and Budgie, none of the forks. This is the first I’ve heard of Kinoite, looks intriguing. I’ll have to give it a shot. Thanks!
That’s the one. I personally use bazzite which has a bunch of gaming stuff and distrobox ready to go. It’s also possible to switch to or between it and any of the other ublue spins with a couple lines in the terminal. I’m not sure if the silver blue based ones like kinoite are included in that. It’s neat being able to try out some other DE’s like hyprland and switch to something else without doing a reinstall or losing personal data.
For my non gamer family members kinoite has everything they need though.
The downsides I’ve noticed so far to these immutable systems is mainly with things like messing with kernel modules and other deep system stuff. I wanted to enable undervolting without disabling secure boot but that seems to require building the kernel with a couple patches and signing modules with a mok and installing the mok to uefi. Annoying. The ‘workaround’ is seemingly to make your own ublue spin which sounds like a pain but I’ll try it eventually.
Other than that most things that aren’t in flatpak or fedora rpm repos via rpm-ostree can be installed using arch Linux via distrobox. It’s a bit janky at first but it’s seamless after going in the distrobox and doing ‘distrobox-export --app (name of program to launch via terminal)’ I didn’t like it at first but I have come to enjoy being able to use the software availability of arch without updating everything every other day.
Thank you for taking the time to write that, because I still have a few more distros to try and getting used to the various repos and installers is part of what I look at: having broad access to whatever apps I may need in the future is a big deal, so that is very valuable information for me anyway; and Fedora having access to all things Arch was a main selling point when I was trying Fedora spins and also EndeavourOS. This is much appreciated. Thanks!
Plus people will hit you with a chair if you don’t use it and Firefox.
Which is fair. 😁
He said chair.
Oh, they rhyme anyway
I can’t tell if you are complaining or just explaining the rules.
I’ve exclusively used Linux on my computers since about 2001. At this point, I don’t care to see this much talk about it either.
It’s an operating system, it’s free (in both senses), it’s very powerful and ,frankly, it’s all I know how to use these days. However, I just don’t see the appeal of harping on about all the time. I use it exclusively, and I spend zero minutes per day actually thinking about it, the way a good operating system should be IMHO.
Not to be confrontational with you but… Exhibit A
Touche
If the 3 biggest OS were all FOSS, I would agree.
Right now, Linux is the ONLY major OS that respects user freedom and privacy. Full stop.
The community around Linux isn’t there because user preference; the real reason it exists and so many people are passionate about it is because FOSS software is the difference between a future that looks like Star Trek, and one that looks like Cyberpunk 2077.
Believe me, I get it. 20+ years of advocacy, though, have earned me exactly 1 convert, and that’s my old man. Who is arguably already a bigger geek than I am, and spending his retirement teaching himself x86-64 assembly “for fun” whilst doing a much better job of de-googling himself than I ever have.
All I’m saying here is that I can see where the OP is coming from. There is an awful lot of Linux talk (and Star Trek talk!) here on Lemmy. I can see how it might feel a little alienating to those who are from outside of that world.
That said, I agree with a lot of other commentors here that have pointed out that any new platform typically attracts the geeks firstly (reddit was no different). In time, I hope to see a much greater variety of peoples on Lemmy!
Thank you. As someone who is very interested in Linux, and someone who has proselytized my tech choices in the past (“Everyone should use Signal”), one of my big fears about switching to Linux is that I’ll never shut up about it, and I’ll bore my friends.
Thank you for showing me that there is another way
it’s harder to do than you think. you can tell people about signal because everyone understands messaging. and telling them to use signal is/was good advice!
Trust me you will never even think to get into the differences between wayland and x11. hate systemd? excited about btrfs? it is literally impossible to discuss any of it without shared context.
Not to alarm you, but you may have a period of 5-10 years where you really can’t shut up about it… it’ll pass, though, honest :)
I switched to full-time, permanent Linux use in 2004. I didn’t even have a one-year period where I felt the need to proselytize it like a vegan.
It’s also a fetish.
Are you referring to those stripey sock wearers? Because I’m far too old to actually understand any of that. Plus, I wouldn’t even look very good in stripey socks anyway
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Hahaha, that’s very kind of you to say! I might have even pulled it off 20 years ago… Never say never, eh! ;)
I’m not sure if I look good in them or not, I only wear them because they feel comfy.
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Oh, hush now, of course I care! I’m just agreeing with OP that there is probably a little too much of it or, more precisely, not enough “other” topics of conversation yet. It’ll come.
On the bright side, look at all the porn!
Look: unixporn! Even there you’re not safe.
I got quite a lot of socks and computer screen posts.
I was annoyed at first by all the Linux content, but honeslty I’ve kinda grown to like it. It feels strangely wholesome somehow.
People supporting open platforms on an open platform is awesome. People complaining about people liking open platforms on an open platform is sortof strange.
It appeals to more tech literate people, tech literate people choose Linux
It needs diverse people to have more diversity
The really tech literate choose one of the BSDs. Probably FreeBSD, though OpenBSD is also out there for those with the urge to self-harm.
The really lunatic tech literate use TempleOS, though.
It’s true that you tend to be more tech literate if you choose Linux. However, it doesn’t mean you can’t be tech literate if you choose Windows or MacOS, which many Linux “advocates” seem to firmly believe. The same goes for “power users” arguments etc.
Tbf, it is mostly tech nerds, all of whom enjoy linux and talking about it, you’ve kind of stepped into a “linux bar” so to speak. This isn’t all our fault! Microsoft users on average are less tech proficient and less likely to seek out tech without tracking opting instead to follow the herd because “it’s easy” or it’s just where their friends are, so they’re back on reddit.
Couple this with the fact that privacy focused things and porn were directly targeted by reddits bullshit, means many of the niche subs users just simply caved, instead of coming here, so there’s less people to talk about building gameboys and comics and whatever, to this all we can do is be the change we want to see in the verse, start the community or join the one with 5 users and scream into the void until it starts screaming back!
to follow the herd because “it’s easy”
Linux users brainstorming on why the operative system they jerk off, it’s only used by knowledgeable nerds instead of the general public, because “user experience” it’s not a word that exists in their vocabulary.
Honestly, I think the user experience is better on Linux. Windows is “easy” because people are used to it, not because it’s good. It’s also has the most Google results and is the default results if you don’t add Linux to your search. Other than that, the UX of Linux is better I think.
Updating applications is done in a centralized place, not each application checking for updates when you open it, which is also when you want to use it not wait for an update. You can customize the desktop and window decorations to be more usable for you. Its got all kinds of things that make it easier to deal with after only just a few days of using it than Windows does. Windows just has money for marketing and a captive user base.
Linux users are the vegans of tech.
It’s more like the people that avoid food contaminated with pesticides and questionably safe additives, but a select few like gnome and *buntu users add it all in anyways either by choice or cluelessness.
Consider this stolen!
Steal away, he didn’t come up with it. Linux users stole the joke “how do you know someone is vegan” a long time ago to meme ourselves, we’re self aware.
“It’s easy” actually translates to “I already know this one and have an unwillingness to learn the other,” which you find out when you realize linux is actually pretty easy too, just different. Gentoo or Arch or something like that excluded, but for distros like Mint, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, etc, that actually does ring true. There is a learning curve, yes, but so too is there one when learning spanish as an english speaker, that doesn’t mean spanish is actually necessarily “harder than english” though, it’s just “harder than speaking the language I already know.” Especially when windows comes preinstalled on most PCs due to corporate contracts, and one has to seek out an alternative.
Also “get good scrub.”
I give kde to the elderly and have no such issues
Tbf, it is mostly tech nerds, all of whom enjoy linux and talking about it,
Tech nerd: yes. Enjoys Linux: no. Enjoys talking about Linux: not really.
That’s one in three.
Tech geeks and nerds (no offense, I’m one too) tend to be the first people to populate any sort of new online social network. Just the way of the internet.
While I do like Linux and talk about it pretty often on the fediverse, I do realize that 96% of internet users don’t care about it and the lingo is…incomprehensible for most people. Even I get kind of sick of talking about Linux on here sometimes lol but unfortunately many of the things I wish I could build a community around simply don’t have the fanbase needed on the fediverse to begin a community for the moment. While not impossible, building a community for relatively niche subjects on a small platform like this that is in direct competition with sites like Reddit is very difficult and easier said than done.
My advice is just try to search around and find things as close to your interests that have active people as possible. Looking for broad communities can help out here, for instance, just go to /c/art of whatever instance instead of trying to find a /c/painting. Also, for Mastodon especially, use hashtags if you haven’t begun to already. Mastodon was wack until I started using hashtags extensively, they somewhat make up for the lack of a recommendation algorithm.
Its pretty rough around here if your interests aren’t related to tech/FOSS/linux, but that should make things a little better. Hopefully there will be more diversity in subjects on the fediverse in the future.
Tech geeks and nerds (no offense, I’m one too) tend to be the first people to populate any sort of new online social network.
Seems more likely to be political extremists, tech nerds is a lucky outcome IMO
