I didn’t even google much about GNOME or KDE. But I did have an exploration period where I opened every dropdown I saw to see what options are there and perused through the settings to see all the things I can change, mapping out how the software works.

A little curiosity goes a long way for getting to know a GUI software IMO. A computer is a complex tool that needs to be mapped out at least a little bit before you need to seriously use it.

I don’t deny that many Linux apps have bad UX and can benefit from improvement. But I don’t like the pretentious way these blogs talk about it, and act like the developers are somehow obligated to fix it for them like it’s a paid product and they’re the customer. If they identify a problem in open source, why not contribute to the solution instead of just demanding a solution from people working for free out of passion like they owe you?

Honestly, the entitlement of the “Linux has bad UX” crowd really pisses me off. Yeah Linux is definitely as unusable as a hammer without a handle, guy. Hit the nail on the head with your handleless hammer right there. Give yourself a pat on the back for your metaphor skills 👍

Mac and Windows have billion dollar UX teams. Linux apps have almost entirely volunteer developers with at most some employees in a tiny company or nonprofit with shoestring budgets.

Mac and Windows have invasive UX “research” by recording user interactions behind their back. Most Linux apps don’t even have the ability to record interaction data by design and intention.

Mac and Windows make money directly from people using their platforms so obviously they’re going to do everything they can to keep you on the platform. Linux apps are donation funded with the occasional enterprise/professional support contract.

Windows and Mac users don’t give a shit about how well the underlying code works because they’re not supposed to see it, and it’s very clear the companies know that and have prioritised accordingly. Linux developers are disproportionately in it for the love of programming and prefer to spend their time actually programming as opposed to doing wireframes or UI markup. Linux UIs tend to get made once and then not touched for years until something absolutely needs to change.

If you compare Linux’s (read: mostly random people developing in their free time’s) UX to the literal biggest tech companies in the world, then you will never run out of things to bemoan Linux for. This is like complaining that your gearhead buddy’s project car has metal toggle switches in random places instead of a nice flowing panel like a brand new car straight off the dealership.

TL;DR: Pull request, long term funding toward establishing a UX team, or STFU. Stop making demands to volunteers and nonprofits and start actually contributing to UX improvements if you care so much. A major ethos of open source is “you don’t like it? You fix it.”

I picked up both GNOME and KDE as a long time Windows user like that. On both mouse and trackpad.

I can’t even figure out how to drag and drop on my friend’s Macbook. Or a lot of other basic things.

If anything Macs are the odd one out with their control scheme, though I’m certainly not ruling out skill issue. But if you claim skill issue on my inability to use a Mac then I’m claiming skill issue on your inability to use Linux.

Also, Chinese cities don’t give a shit if you decorate the outside of your unit. HOAs do.

Literally one of the first complaints libs have about Chinese cities is “copy paste skyscrapers everywhere.” They have some variety in parts of the city but most of the residential areas are still “boring” and “homogeneous” and “designed to kill individualism” according to Western internet geniuses.

Minimalism in GUIs, maybe (still, give me CLI any day). But minimalism in housing and infrastructure is absolutely critical and they are absolutely not equal to software. We need to be as efficient as we can because I don’t know if the author has noticed the state of housing in the world. How many more “boring, dull” buildings could be built for the same price? How many more if we copy pasted the same designs instead of demanding everything be unique? (But god forbid they be too different from the existing style or else the NIMBYs protesting minimalist buildings complain about that too.) The people who “prefer” the visually complex building have never been homeless in the back alley of that building before, nor have they ever been priced out of their neighbourhood by gentrification when their boring gray building gets torn down to build the pretty building.

Not really. Proprietary software have just as many if not more vulnerabilities. Linux is just more honest and open about reporting them so it seems like they have more.

Honestly if you’re at the point of suspecting that your Linux system is infected, just back everything up, wipe, and reinstall. Make sure to use a known good computer to make the install disk, and completely wipe the drive before install and not use existing partitions.

People have mentioned Wireshark which you can use to monitor for suspicious network activity, but IMO for most people this isn’t super helpful because it’s hard to tell what’s suspicious and what’s normal from Wireshark alone without quite a bit of networking/software knowledge. Maybe there’s more user friendly packet capture software though, something that can string the packets together into their respective connections and summarise key information like the protocol and domain involved.

QDirStat can visualize the contents of your drive as an interactive map. Might be helpful for finding files that aren’t supposed to be there.

ClamAV is an open source antivirus available for Linux but I don’t know how well it does at actually detecting Linux malware. Seems to be more for people running file/email servers to scan incoming file uploads.

I mean corporate names aren’t better meaning wise, they just have WAY more marketing behind them so they sound natural by virtue of being in your face until you capitulate.

What does 10^100 have to do with search engines? Also they spelled it wrong.

What does the biggest rainforest in the world have to do with shopping?

What do slight muscle spasms have to do with streaming?

What does a fruit have to do with shitty locked down phones and computers?

What does a colloquial superlative prefix have to do with taxis and food delivery?

What does the sound of a clock have to do with short videos? And before that it was a plant structure.

What does a reflective finish/coating have to do with web browsing?

One of the Wright brothers maybe? Still has nothing to do with image editing though.

Fedora gets no funding and all the karen behaviour in their issues channel I bet. Working with a giant corporation as an open source project sounds like actual hell.

Not surprising, the venn diagram of people who would buy a Framework (or even know it exists) and people who would choose an open source OS (or even know they exist) overlaps quite a bit, I imagine.

Part of the problem is the “mysticism” technology has to people who don’t understand it. The tech companies have an advantage when you don’t understand how tech works and they’ll keep it that way.

Couldn’t even write a decent viral marketing ARG. Like if you’re going to go that route at least respect the art form.

“2030? So still a long time awa-holy shit that’s four years from now”

I feel old

Does KDE also use UserDB?

Any way to not have Systemd on NixOS?

No. There used to be some nice things on Windows, but Windows 11 has thoroughly ruined them.

He’s also aggressively liberal. Watching him discuss politics (which he loves to shoehorn into math/physics videos) as someone significantly left of liberalism is infuriating.