Original Comic: https://thejenkinscomic.wordpress.com/
I’m a proponent of RTFM, (real documentation has a lot more thought put into it then some random response you would get on IRC or a mailing list, and it’s rude to ignore the effort the documentation author put into real documentation) but I always link the user to the appropriate documentation instead of just telling them off.
If you want to support that, a good first step would be to improve TFM, because much of it is far too dense to actually read. Technical writing, knowing how to summarize things through human knowledge, is a critical skill for tech businesses, and most open-source programmers lack it.
After watching this, I’m surprised that most people who answered the survey didn’t find the linux community toxic.
In my personal experience, whenever I’ve needed help, people have been nice and tried to help. But, my questions usually include as much context and details as I can give and even my own guess as to what’s going on, if I have one. I try to make my requests for help as enticing as I can. “I didn’t do anything and now my computer is broken” isn’t a very interesting or scrutable request for help, so I can understand the frustration volunteers get when repeatedly faced with those kinds of questions.
I also feel like some parts of the community might be starting to recognize that, if we want Linux to become mainstream, it has to be absurdly idiot-proof and friendly to newcomers. Afterall, the vast majority of people don’t want their computer to be their hobby, they just want it to facilitate other things.
You should use Wayland, not x
yeah, x11 bad
I was running endeavourOS with kde plasma 6.0 and wayland
couldn’t make discord screenshare work and had to switch (1 click in the login screen) to x11
I don’t truly understand the implications, but now my problem is solved
If you don’t notice anything else different between x11 and Wayland in your daily workflow and have no need for what Wayland offers, then yes your problem is solved and you can ignore the implications.
To this day I still prefer Xorg server. I dont want to ever switch over to wayland no matter what features it is supposed to bring.
In a similar line, I wish I could go back to SysVInit but all the major and enterprise distros are running systemd hell.
Yeah, I keep seeing this and it’s never been my experience in 20+ years of desktop Linux.
Yeah, every now and then there is the asshole and troll. Go to a supermarket and you’ll find them too, go to your job and you’ll find those too. I don’t call all supermarkets asshole conglomerates, it’s simply the world, there are asshats in the world.
I’ve talked directly to main developers of many systems like LVM, PHP, and so on who spent time to help me fix my issues. Who ever got to talk directly to an Apple dev or Microsoft dev?
It’s not just Linux, it’s like that with all open source. Yes, there are negative players everywhere, but mostly it has been a very welcoming and helpful group
I’ll second this. Maybe they’re coming from Reddit? I’ve seen some pretty awful screenshots from there. And I’ll also second the helpfulness of the FOSS devs - I’ve reached out to the OpenSSH maillist to try to better understand the functionality of cert auth and they were super helpful.
Agian, I’m sure there are asshats out there, maybe even just people having a bad day, but generally people in the Foss community are helpful and super nice. Just my experience
