snek_boi

Huh. I see the idea of divide and conquer. But I got a bit lost with "killing bazillions of people as some kind of a ‘market reset’ to drive up shareholder value". I'm thinking of the black plague, which killed millions, but that increased worker power because survivors had less competition and therefore could demand higher wages.

Sure. Please note that I am quite ignorant and unskilled when it comes to Linux. I will seem like someone who’s got shoes on but doesn’t know how to tie them. I’m sorry. I wish I was more skilled and knowledgeable.

ProtonVPN installed via YAST worked on OpenSuse Tumbleweed but didn’t work in OpenSuse Leap.

RStudio in NixOS was hard to update. For example, during the switch to Quarto instead of only Knittr, there was a period where I spent months without updates. I was using an old, old version.

With NixOS, Fedora, or OpenSuse, installing Signal from a program packaged by Signal itself was not possible. There was a Flatpack version run by a contributor, but nothing by an organization.

I totally recognize that I could learn more and become a better user. It’s just a bit frustrating that these weren’t problems for me over at the land of Surveillance Capitalism OSes. I hope these problems are solved with time.

I’ve had loads of problems installing software and making it work.

I bet soon you'll see massive consequential protests.

Same. I actually thought it was Bezos before I realized it couldn’t be.

It sounds like you really value skill, precision, and usefulness.

Fair enough. Now that I think about it, maybe the developer experience in Apple products are not universally lauded.

For example, I remembered Pirate Software saying that he didn't develop for Mac because it was a pain, including having to pay Apple $100 yearly to distribute code without issues. Additionally, I remember my brother meeting a Spotify developer, and the Spotify developer said that Apple makes great hardware but lackluster software.

At the same time, it seems like Swift is not a hated language. The 2023 and 2024 Stack Overflow developer survey reports that, even though few people use Swift (~5% of developers), there's ~60% of admiration for the language.

Oh. I see I was wrong. Amazing. I should look into that! How did you enable it? I did a quick search and found I just need to do gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']"; is that it?

I'm sorry for having said something untrue. For example, DannyBoy points out that GNOME and whatever Ubuntu uses do have fractional scaling.

However, is my experience untrue? Was I lying when I said that my track-pad two-finger scrolling is frustrating? Furthermore, it's not unusual for people at work to try my track-pad and it being way too sensitive or too un-sensitive, but no in between.

Was I lying when I said that, for me, it's hard to get software? Was I lying when I said that maybe this is a skill issue on my part, but even that is indicative of a lack of easy ways of getting reassurance in the way that Apple makes it easy to find software in their App Store?

Was I lying when I said that, to me, GNOME is gorgeous?

Was the creator of the Mojo language lying when he recounted his experience developing Swift?

Was I lying when I said that developers are leaving Linux?

I agree that GNOME and KDE are gorgeous and very polished in many ways. However, I have had some problems in GNOME, Fedora, or Open Suse:

• fractional scaling is not immediately available in Fedora or OpenSuse, at least to users who don't know how to use the terminal [Edit: Thanks, DannyBoys for pointing out that Ubuntu may have fractional scaling enabled by default and that experimental fractional scaling on GNOME can be activated, at a battery cost]
• the track-pad two-finger scrolling is painful (compared to a Mac) to me and to people who have used my laptop with Fedora or OpenSuse
• sometimes it's hard for me to get software, especially outside of .debs. For example, in Fedora I had trouble getting Signal Desktop installed from a source that I felt comfortable with (maybe this speaks to my ignorance in how Fedora packages are set up and distributed more than the reality of insecurity, but even this is part of the issue: I couldn't find any reassurance). To be fair, Open Suse gave me that reassurance, because I understood that YAST was somehow more directly tied to the source (I could be wrong, but that was my impression). However, YAST's software download software is a far cry from the kind of UX that the GNOME Software app is or the Apple App Store.

Despite these problems, I do have to say that GNOME is absolutely gorgeous. It's precisely the kind of user-centricity that I want to see in Linux.

However, the end-users aren't the only users. There are also developers! For example, I remember listening to the developer of the Mojo language talking with Richard Feldman, and the developer said that the development of the Swift language made it clear to him that Apple is aggressively user-centric. I don't doubt that there are many problems with Swift as with Apple products in general, but I don't see that kind of discourse in Linux coming from the main maintainers. Instead, there seems to be a vanguard arguing for a better developer experience (such as writing kernel code in Rust), and they find loads of friction. Heck, key developers are leaving Linux!

Edit: Clarified what is strictly my interpretation.

Today, it is practically impossible to survive being a significant Linux maintainer or cross-subsystem contributor if you’re not employed to do it by a corporation. An interviewer to the Linux dev that's mentioned in the article: "So what did you do next to try to convince the Linux kernel devs of the need for more focus on end-users?"

I appears as if Linux is a nest that is not built with a consistent set of user-centric principles. Instead, it seems that each part of the nest is built with a specific corporation or project in mind.

Assuming I'm right that Linux is built with project-based thinking and not product-based thinking, I do wonder what a user-centric Linux or another user-centric FLOSS OS would be like, an OS that is so smoothly built that users come to think of it not as an OS for tech-savvy people, but an obvious alternative that you install immediately after getting a computer.

If Linux is indeed built with project-based thinking, then I wonder why that is. The uncharitable explanation is that someone doesn't want Linux to have a MacOS-like smooth and gorgeous experience. If you don't think MacOS is smooth and gorgeous, I'll address that.

I know some people have suffered immensely with Apple products not only because Apple builds devices that can't be repaired, but because of things simply not working. However, there are many people who love Apple. That's the kind of passionate advocacy that I would love to see in Linux, and not just around freedom and value-based judgements. I want Linux to be thought of as the least-friction tool for professional or recreational use. I want people to think of Linux as gorgeous and usable.

Of course, we can apply Hanlon's razor to this situation ("Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by [ignorance or lack of skill or practice]."). Managing a product is difficult. Managing a community is difficult. When the nest's design is not built by a team constantly seeking to care about users, but instead by a bunch of users pecking into the nest until their corner is shaped the way they want, it's not surprising to see a lack of user-centricity.

I assume you are American and are referring to the American government.

What I will say will be unpopular. I understand if you think I'm naive. I understand if you get frustrated. I suspect the frustration comes from having clear images of how fascism has been born out of suffrage and supposedly democratic institutions. I suspect the frustration comes from assuming that my suggestion is to 'vote your way out of this situation'. I probably seem like a naive liberal, hugging trees and holding hands with Trump-supporters while watching the sunset. I can't change your beliefs, but I can at least ask whether you're really sure I'm that.

Here's what I believe: the future is democratic.

How can I possibly say that when Trump is in power, destroying democratic institutions, covering with his hand the mouths of Americans?

It is evident that Trump is an authoritarian populist.

And populist because he systematically disregards and discredits people who know what they're talking about (experts), and instead do things out of fear that their fragile ego will be hurt. It's ironic: populists claim to represent their citizens but they don't listen to the citizens who actually know what they're talking about. If the truth is inconvenient for the populists' ego, it's a good idea to cover the sun with their thumb. Nobody will notice how ridiculous it looks, right?

It is evident that America is currently experiencing a democratic backlash.

The story of this democratic backlash started a while ago. Over the past decades and even centuries, Americans have slowly come to not only value freedom but also be able to transform their political institutions to be more democratic. Women owning property. Black people gaining the right to drink from the same water-fountain as white people, the right to vote, the right to own property… An educational system that's incredibly flawed and ridiculously overpriced for what it actually delivers, but one that's envied by many nations on Earth that do not score nearly as high in tests of basic science, math, and reading comprehension. Americans were able to not only look at the goal, but also take steps towards it. These changes aimed to make every American more capable and therefore more free.

However, democratic institutions mean elites lose their capacity to extract privileges from their underlings. To elites, there is such a thing as too much freedom for people, too much freedom to choose who to be and what to do with their lives. Elites noticed people were questioning why elites extracted so many privileges and didn't contribute to people or invest in people. People were questioning why they have to slave away their lives paying college debt, medical debt, and mortgages while the ultra-rich are buying their third yacht or jet. The people who most extracted wealth from American people did not want to pay back or invest in its people.

American elites saw this as a great opportunity to finance swindlers. The current swindler, The Orange Swamp Man, sold Americans a beautiful knife. The knife itself wasn't the problem; it was quite capable in destroying capabilities and freedoms. The problem was that the instructions were hard to follow. Americans have found it difficult to hold the smile on their face while stabbing themselves and twisting. The Orange Swamp Man says Americans will have to suffer through tariffs, but that it's definitely not going to make them suffer more in the long term. The Orange Swamp Man correctly believes that destroying democratic institutions such as healthcare, education, and the basic guarantee of rights is necessary for American elites to extract as much money and power from American people.

It's important to note that not everyone bought the knife and stabbed themselves. Trump won by a slim margin and Trump is highly unpopular. Those of you who are still alive and well can do something about it. In fact, I'm willing to bet you will, because undemocratic governments do not survive massive organic protests.

How so? Imagine this scenario: Give a man a book and he may never pick it up. Teach a man to read and he'll silently look around, noticing a lack of development and freedom. Teach men, women, children—everyone to read and you'll have a bustling conversation: "Really? Is that fair?" "Why does the richest man on Earth not want to invest in the roads that his products use? Why does he not want to invest in the people that made him rich?" "My wife and I had bad accidents and we can't work. Is our society so selfish that it doesn't care about us?" This may seem cartoonish, but this is how people realize there's a mismatch between (1) the elite's way of extracting and hoarding privileges and (2) how everyday people see the situation.

Each critical thought, each enlightening conversation makes the pressure grow, like a balloon getting pregnant with air, ready to burst at any moment.

All of this language may seem allegorical, metaphorical, out of touch, and absurd. But it is based on decades of research on how democracies are formed and sustained. Check out this article and its cited literature if you're interested: https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/why-the-future-is-democratic/ Also, my story about how American elites relate to their people is essentialized, compressed, and probably missing details that authors like Acemoglu, Robinson, Welzel, Piketty, Shaikh, and Mazzucato can fill in.

As to what you can do, I'd recommend learning how to frame discussions. Not that I'm good at it, but people who know how to use can change how the world works. Social movements die or thrive depending on whether people can internalize what you're saying.

What do you think? Are you willing to keep on stepping forward in tried and true paths? https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/spc3.12501 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337861541_Moral_reframing_A_technique_for_effective_and_persuasive_communication_across_political_divides (sorry for the paywal; you can usually email academics and they'll send you the text, or you can find alternative texts or sources).