Facebook is banning posts that mention various Linux-related topics, sites, or groups. Some users may also see their accounts locked or limited when posting Linux topics. Major open-source operating system news, reviews, and discussion site DistroWatch is at the center of the controversy, as it seems to be the first to have noticed that Facebook’s Community Standards had blackballed it.
[…]
DistroWatch says that the Facebook ban took effect on January 19. Readers have reported difficulty posting links to the site on this social media platform. Moreover, some have told DistroWatch that their Facebook accounts have been locked or limited after sharing posts mentioning Linux topics.
If you’re wondering if there might be something specific to DistroWatch.com, something on the site that the owners/operators perhaps don’t even know about, for example, then it seems pretty safe to rule out such a possibility. Reports show that “multiple groups associated with Linux and Linux discussions have either been shut down or had many of their posts removed.” However, we tested a few other Facebook posts with mentions of Linux, and they didn’t get blocked immediately.
[…]
Man pages are not good for beginners. Help pages, I am not sure if they exist within the OS for such things I mentioned such as the terminal or not.
I was being specific so as to avoid it blowing up into multiple things, but yes there being no tutorials built in is common to many FOSS things I have come across.
I disagree wholeheartedly with your assertion that people should not be handheld through the learning process or that it’s entitlement to expect or even want it, if we want people to learn and get better at things then such things are useful and needed but they have to start somewhere and having a machine ‘hold their hand’ is better than them getting frustrated imo.
So what if no other OS does it to the degree I think it should? FOSS could prove itself to be better by doing what other OSs don’t, but you seem to be suggesting it shouldn’t and that is something I genuinely don’t understand. If we want people to use it as I often see FOSS obsessives tell people yet do absolutely nothing to support them in doing so, just call their closed source software shit, tell them to move to open source and then are like “lol, byeeeee” if they do and then have no idea how to use it, especially if they do so just to not be berated by them again.
I disagree that people earnestly looking for help should be called ‘entitled noobs’ and even if they are, so what?
I’d rather help them so they can move on to learning on their own. This is exactly the attitude and viewpoint I was addressing, foss people cannot see how it benefits us all to help even those that just want a ‘quick fix’ to their problems as it is more than possible in a few years time those people might be even more helpful as they remember how they were treated in the face of their confusion about it.
I don’t agree only that those people put in the effort themselves should be helped, even if it’s indirectly, writing a beginner level tutorial and then linking it is more useful and nets more use to foss than just saying “no figure it out yourself” in the long term and I genuinely do not understand why people think that ‘handouts’ are bad if they get a good result in the future or at least get the person to stop asking.
I’ve actually written many tutorials for things and plan on writing more in the future, I’ve helped many people with software both closed and open source, so yeah, I have some experience there and completely understand people’s frustration with the general foss community when they cannot get help. I’ve been that person many times too and so decided to do something about it, I genuinely hope others do too so that we can all grow together whether people start from ‘entitled’ roots or not.