Linux Reply Guys

[julesjones]

I got a little... peeved.. with Linux Reply Guys on Mastodon. Putting my rant from 1/2/2025 here so I have it to hand for the next time.
 https://mendeddrum.org/@JulesJones/113928786877625625

******

Someone posts warning about Adobe Reader now comes with free spyware, er, AI, and shows how to turn it off(ish).

Reply Guys: You should switch to Linux.

OP: There's a large user base of people who need to know about this.

Reply Guys: You should switch to Linux.

OP: That's not the point...
1/6


Reply Guys: You should switch to Linux.

OP: You can't get millions of people to switch...

Reply Guys: There is no such thing as free software, you are the product.

OP: That is still not the point, not everyone is able to...

Reply Guys: They deserve what they get for not switching to Linux.
2/6


There is a *massive* amount of privilege in the assumption that anyone who doesn't invest in the high learning curve to learn Linux (or other flavours of "you should switch to") deserves to be left at the mercy of whatever the techbros are selling, without being given any self-defence tools.
3/6


And bluntly, that sort of attitude comes from the same place as "all your data are belong to us". The tech Great Unwashed should just do as they're told by their superiors.
4/6


I'm more tech-literate than most lusers. I went through RSTS, CP/M, George, VMS and DR-DOS before being dragged kicking and screaming onto MS-DOS and Windows. And I do not have the time or spoons to deal with all the stuff needed to convert my OS *and* all the software I use to Approved FOSS.
5/6


Also - because of who I follow on Mastodon, I got to watch in real time a massive flap over a massive security hole in a FOSS OS created by a vulnerability embedded into the very foundation of FOSS. Not buying the "Linux is secure by design" nonsense.

(And I've shown my age...)
6/6



[name of Linux fankid redacted]

But it is secure by design. Security isn't a yes/no zero sum game. Security flaws will happen, what's most important is how you deal with them.

I do have to ask, what is George? It's rare I get to talk to someone who was in computing in that era!



[me]

 Anything that can be reliant on one overwhelmed developer being left to fend for himself is insecure by design.

I was a computer user, not in computing as such. I was taught Pascal, which still underpins my mental model of things like word processing stylesheets, then Fortran, which I never did wrap my mind round, taught myself Basic, then PostScript. This was mostly a side-effect of being a science student then scientist in the 80s and 90s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEORGE_(operating_system)


I certainly have the "Ooh, *shiny*!" reaction to software, but the closest I got to being a dev was having to learn Lotus macro language over a weekend because $EMPLOYER needed a database recoded. (Boss, when I whined that I didn't know macro. "We don't pay you to know it. We pay you to be the sort of person who can learn it in a weekend.")


 

Comments

[castiron]

*applause*

I have never installed Linux because I have never had sufficient uninterrupted time and brainspace to figure it out. And at this point, if I did get that big block of UTAB, I'd rather use it for one of the numerous other activities I've been putting off for when I had sufficient UTAB.

[julesjones]

Yep. One of the reasons the Linux Reply Guys drive me nuts is that they are blind, some of them wilfully, to how the large amount of time both in hours spent and in number of calendar years they've been doing it makes it seem easy to them. It *isn't* easy if you haven't been doing it as a hobby or profession for years, but it gives some of them a lovely warm glow of smug self-righteousness about being morally superior for doing this thing that obviously anyone could do but is too lazy or sheep-like to do so.

And it's really frustrating when a Linux person does something for Windows users, as the OP did, and just gets this nonsense from the True Believers who think their hobby of the last twenty years should have been everyone else's hobby of the last twenty years.

[rpdom]

I do use Linux. I haven't touched Windows for years. I'm happy with that.

I may mention it to others sometime.

But I don't try to persuade people to change. I realise there are many reasons why they cannot or don't want to.

[julesjones]

I know several normal Linux users, and I know that if I *ask* for advice I will get it, and it will be useful advice. I just get annoyed with the Linux True Believers who see any mention of an issue with a different OS as an opportunity to lambast someone for not using Linux, or to offer "help" that consists of "just switch to Linux". (You get this with other OSes as well, but it seems to be Linux that really suffers from Reply Guys.)

It gets really ridiculous when my answer to "why don't you just use Linux" is "Because I work for an organisation with 100,000 employees that uses Microsoft, and I do not have the spoons to deal with a completely different system at home, including my specialist assistive tech software" and the response is "then you should tell them to use Linux, and you should use this FOSS running on Linux because it will be a complete substitute for all the functions you ought to need in your specialist assistive tech software and any functions it doesn't have are clearly ones nobody needs".

[heleninwales]

I have actually used Linux, but it was only briefly to resurrect an aged laptop and was for one specific project when I was doing the B.Ed degree. It is not entirely impossible that I may one day switch if (and only if) Windows goes to a subscription, everything is in the cloud All Your Data Are Belong To Us model.

The reason for not switching before is that the colleges where I taught used Windows and MS Office and it was much easier to teach students how to use software if I was using it myself at home for my own projects. That no longer applies, but though I now use LibreOffice and the video and sound editing software I use is available for Linux, there are other packages I use that might not be.

But the main reason for not switching now I'm retired is that I'm an "if it's not broke, don't fix it" person. Setting up a new OS and finding replacement software for stuff that just works would really set back all the projects I'm busy working on.