The Late Night Linux FamilyWhat's pulling you away from open source, and what will pull you back?
(your replies may be read out and discussed on an episode of Late Night Linux)
catraxx 
@LateNightLinux Nothing is. Open source is awesome. Keep on rocking. 
popey@LateNightLinux In a word. Pragmatism. I need to pay the bills, I prefer iOS to Android and I like my GPU and wireless card to work well. ðŸ«
stdevel@LateNightLinux Feedback. It’s always the feedback. I’m happy when someone reports a bug in one of my tools on GitHub. Sometimes people also supply patches and thank for the efforts, which is nice. But sometimes there are folks who get annoyed and don’t understand that this work is done in my free time. It’s not my job. In this case I just hate the internet. :)
merijn@LateNightLinux the girlfriend aproval factor the reason my tv setup runs on the nvidia shield. And anti-cheat in games has me running dual-boot windows again. But other than that. Open source all the way
senI'd say usability and privacy. OSMAnd absolutely sux in terms of POI lookup, but I use it bc I know that google wont sell/release my location data to 3rd parties. Is this worth it? Sometimes I really do ask myself. So far the answer has been yes. Then again I guess this is the core tenant of foss ideology right? Software that respects you above all else.
maya@LateNightLinux capitalism, communism
Herb Theriault@LateNightLinux I ran Linux as my daily driver for almost 20 years. I left for the Apple ecosystem in late 2020. The M1 was the last piece of the puzzle. The open source software I was using had fallen behind in features, and UX, to the point of making it painful. I was tired of hacks and workarounds to accomplish what I needed to do. The developer forums were full of decades old arguments about things that no longer matter. It was time to go.
Martin Halford@LateNightLinux My wife has an Android tablet (Lenovo) and complains the touch screen response is poor. But then again we had trouble entering India because she couldn't make the fingerprint scanner work. Should I buy her an iPad?
MacSlow@LateNightLinux using or writing Open source?
@LateNightLinux well then, here we go... software use (private use): as much as possible (about 90% OpenSource, 10% closed source) ... software development (private & work): used to be 100% OpenSource (private & work) in the past, changed to 85% closed source (work) and 15% OpenSource (private) these days.
Jens@LateNightLinux I use hand me down stuff only for my stationary computer and since most graphic cards are Nvidia cards, I play a few games, that means the proprietary drivers have to be there. Aside from that I guess there is a few banking apps on my phone.
But in general I stick to FOSS things since the proprietary world have shifted hard to "it just works" which is grand, until it doesn't and then fixing it is close to impossible.
Thomas@LateNightLinux Convergence and interoperability across devices and between family - phone, laptop, tablet. Just can’t do it gracefully with open source.
ZS@LateNightLinux I've basically moved away from Home Assistant and gone back to Smartthings. Why? Home Assistant had something blow up every update, or they just randomly changed something with little to no consultation. Smartthings just works, and continues to do so, I've not had to look at it in months, compared to daily futzing and troubleshooting with HA.
digitalfox@LateNightLinux Friends on social networks, chat platforms, games, etc.
The two biggest ones are Discord (which I can use in my IRC client with Bitlbee), and VRChat, which isn't merely proprietary, it requires EasyAntiCheat (it does work in VR on Linux, thankfully).
I think it'd take those friends switching to open alternatives to pull me back.
nigelCurrent Kernels are shit on my particular AMD setup. I have a Ryzen 5600G, and when running internal gpu it seems ok most of the time, but when running my 5700XT GPU I rarely get logged in before crashing to reboot. Nothing in logs is overly useful.
This is a known thing apparently, so I just reside in Windows on my desktop until I build a new PC at some point in the next few years as it is not worth my time.
See https://forum.level1techs.com/t/amd-gpu-hype-on-linux-pc/208035
I still run Linux on a couple of VPS I run (for my blogs and this snac instance), and my Raspberry Pis at home which are for media on TV and a PiHole.
I am at the point in my life where I realise it is shorter than we think, and I don't want to spend more time on that stuff if I don't have to. More importantly, my wife doesn't want me to 😆
Seriously though, if it works I will use it. If it doesn't, I am not. Also Linux feels bloated and slow compared to even a few years ago, but maybe that's just the Desktop Environments.
This is a known thing apparently, so I just reside in Windows on my desktop until I build a new PC at some point in the next few years as it is not worth my time.
See https://forum.level1techs.com/t/amd-gpu-hype-on-linux-pc/208035
I still run Linux on a couple of VPS I run (for my blogs and this snac instance), and my Raspberry Pis at home which are for media on TV and a PiHole.
I am at the point in my life where I realise it is shorter than we think, and I don't want to spend more time on that stuff if I don't have to. More importantly, my wife doesn't want me to 😆
Seriously though, if it works I will use it. If it doesn't, I am not. Also Linux feels bloated and slow compared to even a few years ago, but maybe that's just the Desktop Environments.
AMD GPU hype on Linux PC
I saw some hype from this youtube creator https://www.youtube.com/@Level1Linux/videos When in reality - nothing works on AMD GPUs. Yes, I have owned an AMD GPU for the last few years, and I did fix a lot of bugs in the Linux kernel driver with this piece-of-software that is amd driver. Now on kernel 6.7 - it just beyond unusable. The most popular freeze/crash on AMD GPUs is - amdgpu: ring gfx timeout Just google it. And to trigger - amdgpu: ring gfx timeout - I can do it using only mouse...
stig atleWell, the only reason I keep windows around is because I play PUBG. I really wish they had a linux version (or proton support), that would enable me to remove windows completely. For all other things I use Linux.
Ciarán@LateNightLinux
Pulling away:
Strong digital skills. Be it work or at home, I need to use the best tool for the job and only using FOSS can be too self-limiting. Excel is still the king of financial tools.
External factors. I am doing some professional exams this year that require Windows for exam monitoring. This has put a requirement on me to maintain a dual boot. The need of banking apps on my phone has also stopped me from using lineageos.
Time. Open source is a big time commitment.
(1/2)
@LateNightLinux
Pulling towards:
Romantic. The idea of being able to go against "the system" and DIY your own home server has a big appeal. When we live in a complex society, a little bit more independence can feel great.
Ideology. Embracing FOSS can have a positive effect on your local economy. Either you upskill yourself and develop a skill that can help others around you, or you can opt to pay someone else who has the skillset. Pro circular economy.
Hobby. It's fun most of the time.
(2/2)
Dipole@LateNightLinux Are you asking about choosing to use open source software, or are you asking about contributing to projects?
@dipolecat answer it however you want!
Tom@LateNightLinux Pulling away:
- Work. Although right now I'm unemployed and this isn't a problem, previously I had to use MS Teams for work communication and Windows on my work machine with Visual Studio and the like.
- Family & friends. Staying in touch with family and friends in some cases means that I need to use things like Facebook Messenger.
- Entertainment. I watch a lot of TV, specifically a lot of streaming services, and there doesn't really seem to be a good FLOSS option for that. I also like playing a lot of games that are not FLOSS. Although thankfully I haven't felt the need to run Windoes for games in a long time.
Pulling back:
- Inertia (huh?!). I've been using mainly FLOSS projects since about 2008 now, I feel most comfortable with these programs. Emacs is basically my entire digital life now and I can't (and don't want to) extricate myself from that.
- Stability (or something). I know that whatever I use isn't going to suddenly go away. I've been hosting my own social bookmarking site since 2008 or so and while the project has been discontinued there are still just enough people using it that I can still run it today. del.icio.us has long since disappeared, which is what I used before. I also am not as scared of enshittification, since I can and someone will usually fork something if things go bad with that project.
- Privacy. I like the feeling of not contributing to the current data economy if I can.
- Trust. Open source projects are much less likely to run away with my data or credentials. If I self-host something it can't be sold either. And I still do still prefer installing things through a package manager rather than installing random binaries from the internet or piping curl into sudo bash.
- Curiosity. I like tinkering with things. I like learning about things.
- Malleability. As evidenced by my use of Emacs I like adjusting how things work and how they integrate. Emacs, stumpwm, and Guix are just some of the really cool malleable projects.
- Fun. There is just so much to find and do with open source projects.
Stephen Michael Kellat@LateNightLinux I literally teach a higher ed digital literacy class that has in the description: "This is a Windows based hands-on course." I have to work with Teams and MS365. That being said, I do sneak in references to Nextcloud where I can as well as other F/LOSS projects. I use the tools at home that I have to teach in class.
I have learned, though, that pandoc does an amazing job of making PowerPoint slides without needing PowerPoint. Follow its easy special Markdown extension and...
Shaadra@LateNightLinux
Puling me away: convenience
Pulling me back: ethics
I've landed on the side of ethics wherever possible though.
Puling me away: convenience
Pulling me back: ethics
I've landed on the side of ethics wherever possible though.
BaltMatrix 🤖@LateNightLinux i’m finding that the proprietary software have a lower barrier to entry than the open source ones. For example, to put a solid line around an object in gimp it’s around 12 to 17 steps. To do the same thing in Photoshop is only eight clicks. Also, the community has become exhausting. All the fighting and bickering has prevented forward momentum . And in the larger projects, I see a ton of corruption. I am of course specifically talking about Mozilla and Firefox.
@LateNightLinux I’m also so tired of fighting everything. It feels like no matter what I want to do with an open source application. It’s a 2 to 3 hour slog to do one thing. I don’t run into the same issues with most proprietary applications.
Ethan@LateNightLinux Anti cheat for gaming (Easy Anti Cheat for iRacing and Vanguard for League of Legends) and Windows Remote Desktop for Azure (for work) keeping me away. Debian + Distrobox keeps pulling me back. If I could get easy and effective pass through for Windows I would be so happy.
waffles 
@LateNightLinux phone is given to me by the carrier and has a whitelist of devices so I'm kinda stuck with what they give me now
Linux is great on some of my computers but I keep windows or a chromium based browser in my back pocket in case something doesn't work
Linux is great on some of my computers but I keep windows or a chromium based browser in my back pocket in case something doesn't work
Noodlez 
@LateNightLinux Interacting with "normal" people. Sometimes I just gotta interact with family members and other people of society that could give two fucks about my open source limitations, and it's this limitation to the niche that makes it difficult. What pulls me back, however is deciding that if people want to do things their way all the time, I should have the right to make it go the other way around.
@LateNightLinux proprietary CAD software is a very, very long way ahead of FOSS CAD. The differences in usability being so great as to be unusable for many tasks. Only those who use simple sketch+pad blocks seem to be OK.
Bill@LateNightLinux It’s privacy that keeps me as FOSS as possible. The amount of telemetry that non-FOSS pulls from us is remarkable. The downside is the continual road bumps with FOSS, which is understandable given that large profits do not drive FOSS.
rRobbieI started to use open source software full time two years ago. I always used Linux in an out since Red Hat 2.0. Used macOS for several years and then dropped when Mac prices where way too high compared with a similar spec PC. I cannot stand Windows, though at work I am supplied with a fully managed Windows laptop with full Microsoft ecosystem. Office 365 is the killer app for Windows. I wish Libre Office or Easy Office would be less frustrating for my muscle memory 😕
laydros@LateNightLinux I would rather be on GrapheneOS, but my family is all on iOS, so I use an iPhone for Find My, HomeKit, other iCloud stuff. Actually got my family on Signal, so I don’t miss iMessage. I also really like AirTags, and the best non-Apple equivalents are worse for privacy. I find Apple better than Google, Roku, Samsung, etc. for privacy.
Mac for guitar software and recording too. But for the most part I’m so used to Linux on the desktop, I get frustrated with Windows or macOS.