I looked at their site and thought: What a #!@$ stupid idea.

The whole thing stinks of Twitter brain. “Follow topics, not people”? So what you’re saying is that the null brains on Twitter are far too focused on whenever one of the Kardassians farts to focus on anything real?

Puhh-lease. The Fediverse isn’t about that all.

Hard pass.

I’ll take “Product Categories That SHOULD NEVER EXIST” for $1000 Alex!

I get it.

I don’t love Snaps either.

However, a thing I try to remember and wish others would as well is simply this: Canonical is a company. Their goal is to make money. They are not out to create the ultimate free as in freedom Linux distribution.

This does (to my mind) not make them evil, and ESPECIALLY doesn’t make the folks who work there evil. It makes them participants in the great horrible game that is Capitalism, and expecting anything else from them is going to lead to heartache, as you’ve seen.

If you want a Linux distro that shares your preferences and won’t try to jam snaps down your throat, you might consider giving Debian a whirl as many others have.

Continuing to ride the Ubuntu train and raging against the dying of the light when it continues chugging in the direction it’s been headed for YEARS seems … futile :)

Is that contract copyrighted?

I think by far the biggest problem with open source is that the user community fundamentally mis-understands the nature of the transaction involving them and the developer(s) of the software they’re using.

I think if we could make everyone sit down, take 10 minutes and just read The Social Contract Of Open Source a lot of people would keep developing OSS software.

Brass tacks: You are being given a gift. The person who gave you that gift owes you NOTHING because… They gave you a gift and by using their software you chose to accept it.

I see it all the time in the open source project I co-maintain, and I have it SUPER easy beacause ours is really just a bundle of configuration files for Neovim.

This one goes to 11 :) seriously though? Good on them. The good guys deserve their fair share of hype too!

Kinda disappointing how much of the community just takes a giant 💩 on Mozilla whatever it does these days. Funding open source is super crazy hard folks. Notice that the really successful well funded projects are fueled by megacorps?

Offering constructive criticism is great but if you don’t have better ideas around how to fund an open browser without selling your soul to GOOG or MSFT then perhaps your energy might be better spent elsewhere.

• Last Splash by the Breeders
• White Album - The Beatles
• The Wall - Pink Floyd

Baldur’s Gate 3 on the desktop because it’s so good and Bayonetta on my Steamdeck because I got it dirt cheap from humble bundle and it plays great there :)

I saw so many Meh reviews of The Expanse. Glad to hear someone who enjoyed it! I’m a HUUGE fan of the books and TV show and would love to play the game at some point!

Yeah, “brand new” hardware is rough in the Linux-verse :) I think Linux advocates need to be more up front with that as well. Quite a number of them are rocking 15 year old Thinkpads because that’s what they read will maximize compatibility.

A thing I wish more Linux enthusiasts were more up front about: And prepare for PAPER CUTS! Because they’re there. Most Linux folks ^1 probably do 5-6 things a day that new folks would find confusing or infuriating, just because they Get Used To It.

A perfect example: My Linux desktop is a System76 Thelio-r2 running Manjaro KDE latest, which I LOVE. Every time I boot it up, if I want to use my BT speakers or headphones ^2 I have to go into the BT settings panel, wonder why it says “Bluetooth Disabled - Enable Bluetooth”, click the button, and move on with my day.

Turns out this is because of a kernel bug in the latest kernel versions with Intel bluetooth hardware. The driver times out at system boot, and thus the system is disabled by default. By the time you’re fully booted, that time out never happens so if you just click Enable, you’re good to go.

And these things are additive. They pile up and increase frustration for end users who aren’t savvy enough to know which forums to search on or what search terms to pump into their search engines.

This does not mean you shouldn’t try Linux. Please do! It can be a life changer and a serious power up! But be aware that the path will have many small roadblocks that need to be traversed, so just set your expectations accordingly, explore and have fun!

^1: I use Windows, Linux and Mac as need dictates. Let “tool to task” be the whole of the law :)

^2: Perfect example: Many Linux users wouldn’t use Bluetooth speakers! They’d get wired ones or one of those RF thingies that has long time Linux driver support. But if you’re new, you don’t know that!

Hey would you be willing to pass the site you found this on so we can all studiously avoid it? :)

Couldn’t agree more.

For what it’s worth I think Brett Cannon wrote one of the best posts ever on the social contract of open source and how Not To Be That Guy :)

https://snarky.ca/the-social-contract-of-open-source/

Should be required reading IMO for anyone ever on Github :P