Personally it’s the degree of fanaticism around Linux here. I use Linux on most of my machines but I’ve seen so much weird gatekeeping and elitism around Linux here. You’ve gotta use Linux but don’t use Ubuntu or Fedora because of what Canonical or Red Hat are doing. Oh but don’t use Arch because you’ll be required to tell everyone that you use it, btw. Oh, you chose a distro that uses systemd? Why do you hate the unix philosophy? It’s just exhausting.
Yeah, I get that. The tribalism can be a bit of fun sometimes but there are too many people who take it way too far. I don’t understand using it as a means of division.
At the end of the day, there is far more that unites us than divides us. We seek to empower ourselves and reject the ever increasing corporate control of our computing and digital lives. For some that means self-hosting their own cloud stuff and for others it is simply being able to boot into the OS and edit an Office document without needing ridiculous fucking subscriptions.
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
Personally it’s the degree of fanaticism around Linux here. I use Linux on most of my machines but I’ve seen so much weird gatekeeping and elitism around Linux here. You’ve gotta use Linux but don’t use Ubuntu or Fedora because of what Canonical or Red Hat are doing. Oh but don’t use Arch because you’ll be required to tell everyone that you use it, btw. Oh, you chose a distro that uses systemd? Why do you hate the unix philosophy? It’s just exhausting.
It feels like a weird geek version of virtue signalling – who can have the most ‘correct’ setup
Yeah, I get that. The tribalism can be a bit of fun sometimes but there are too many people who take it way too far. I don’t understand using it as a means of division.
At the end of the day, there is far more that unites us than divides us. We seek to empower ourselves and reject the ever increasing corporate control of our computing and digital lives. For some that means self-hosting their own cloud stuff and for others it is simply being able to boot into the OS and edit an Office document without needing ridiculous fucking subscriptions.
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.