Hey, Linux people: a LOT of folks are screaming off Windows right now.

Be. Kind. To. Them.

They don't know much yet, so they are going to ask really basic questions. If you're KIND, you might get some to give it a try and stick to it bc they know they can ask for help. If you're unkind, you're showing them using Linux will be *worse* than Windows. If you can't bring yourself to be kind, then SAY NOTHING. Let others pick up that slack.

#FOSS #FLOSS #OpenSource #Linux #Ubuntu #Debian #LinuxMint

So what's it like to use Linux as my main desktop OS for almost half a year now?

It's like I used to live in a fancy apartment with fine furniture and abstract art on the walls, everything "smart" and fully automated, except it wasn't mine. It belonged to an abusive landlord, who liked to come and go as they pleased, changing and rearranging whatever they wanted, sometimes telling me no, I can't do this or that for whatever reason. Every few months they'd increase the rent and install more cameras to make sure I didn't do anything they didn't like.

And now I've moved into a wooden cottage, built by my new strange but mostly friendly neighbors. They don't charge rent, they just thought building a house was fun and then they didn't know what to do with it. It has cool gadgets and contraptions too, but some of them are unfinished, in some places you can see the wiring where the plaster fell of the walls, and there's one room with a hole in the floor but we just put a wooden board over it and it's fine - we'll fix it eventually. It's still a nice house, cozy and warm, and I can put whatever I want on my walls and nobody bothers me. Sometimes the neighbors have loud parties at night and it's kinda difficult to sleep, but I've learned that it's a lot more fun to just join them instead.

I'm still friends with my old neighbors, though I admit I feel disconnected sometimes when I hear their landlord installed another camera in their bedroom, but they still can't bring themselves to live with loud neighbors and a hole in the floor. My first instinct is to argue with them, but then I realize it also took me twenty years living with that same landlord before it was finally enough for me, and if someone had suggested that I should move elsewhere, I also would have told them to fuck off. Because while it's always possible to abandon your home and move elsewhere, it sure isn't easy - it's often painful, takes a lot of time, and requires difficult compromises that may not be the right ones at that time. All I can say is that from where I am now, I'm pretty sure I'm not going back.

And to my friends who might feel addressed by this: there are far more important issues in life than your choice of apartment (or desktop OS), and I still love you