Lime Buzz (fae/she)

fae/she

Plural and not human, don’t include or refer to us in any way as being human, we aren’t. Sometimes will be I, sometimes we.

Never tell us what we’re feeling, why we’re doing something or what we are.

Not here to punish, your punitive mindset is showing.

Ask more questions, assume less.

  • 25 Posts
  • 62 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: April 18th, 2022

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  • 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.



  • Yes, but many foss is just created with those already in the know about what it does in mind.

    FOSS has historically and continues to be unhelpful to many people coming into it. There’s often no beginner level tutorials built in, no easily accessible communities that do not have at least one smug asshole that is utterly unhelpful saying things like “just fork it” or “it’s not for you”.

    So if FOSS ever wants to actually position itself as helpful for the common person it needs a lot more people prepared to write these tutorials etc and build them into the software itself, not just assume internet access or that such things can be found online.

    The biggest one is the terminal. As far as I’m aware it does not come with a tutorial built in ever on any distro. It does not on first opening it say “hey, here are the things you can do” because the developers do not consider that people might be entirely unfamiliar with such things and/or nobody wishes to write one or include it even if it is written.

    So yes, foss is good for freedom but at the expense of having support built in to get people started, unlike many closed sourced software things. I don’t therefore see how it is useful to people that have no clue how to get started with it, thus often sending them back to the very things FOSS says they should escape.


  • It was more of a call out to people that only care about foss and nothing else, a challenge.

    I in general do not think most of the foss community is good because they have shown themselves time and time again to be overly protective of it and themselves in opposition to what most people actually need from software or other things.

    It has some very worrying views politically which likely stem from abusers like stallman and that we live under such a myopic, self centered system such as capitalism and so this leads people to have a very blinkered view on what is important, often times, sadly foss obsessives are smug know-it-alls who tell you that if you don’t like it then just fork it or to go back to windows etc, instead of actually being helpful. Not to mention many of them have very bigoted views.

    They do not see that foss could be more liberatory if they actually pulled their heads out of their ego and took a more community based approach. I get that some are like this and I am grateful, but I’ve been told many times no without any justification given or given bizzare workarounds that do not actually fix the problem and so had to basically abandon the software they claim is good because it no longer works for its supposed purpose. FOSS is no less hierarchical or authoritarian than other software inherently as many times unhelpful changes are forced upon users without their consent and it can be difficult to change back or disable, but people like to pretend it is for some reason.

    Part of the problem with it is that we all live in a system where the developers need money to live and so will refuse point blank to help if they are not paid which sadly leads to them mostly supporting companies and not what people say foss is actually useful for: the common person. So it is as subject to them whims of capitalism as anything else but people like to pretend it is not for some reason.

    People do need to eat and so it is good if they are paid, but I wonder how many people actually do so and how much developers care if they do unless they are getting the big bucks from them somehow.

    The point therefore is that foss on its own is not as liberatory as people seem to think it is and it is more that people who only care about foss this was directed at.

    I use linux and other foss things daily, but I do not think they are as good as they could be because they are actively hostile to people’s needs and to devs too (see the kernel rust incident), this is why I find it a bit silly to care about linux compared to other things, but if people do care about both then that is good.

    Also sadly, having more people in the community with more diverse needs and views does not inherently shift many developers and they double down more, so I did not think having facebook censor it was neither here nor there as to whether foss was or could be good or not.

    I do understand now that maybe that was presumptious of me but for other reasons unrelated to linux and foss itself and more to the discussions people might have and how much those are allowed or not.