They used to advertise Linux.

You don’t need to mention them by name.

I switched nearly two decades ago after I used a freeware network monitor on Windows and realized that it was making dozens of silent TCP connections online. Some were to Microsoft, while others were to unknown third parties. Just imagine your personal machine doing this!

Linux is actually easy to use these days. Installation is often easier than windows and hardware just works most of the time. Despite that, people have a habit of exaggerating the difficulties in using Linux or BSD. They very often feel like excuses to avoid checking it out.

This is exactly what was predicted as the result of corporate surveillance and targeted ads. They are part of schemes to extract more revenue from you. Another example is the rising premium for health insurance. But people apparently had “nothing to hide”!

Microsoft uses a lot of Linux. Especially on Azure.

Most governments use some sort of enterprise Linux distros, not their own distros. Even when they do, it’s their distros. Why would they worry about censorship and surveillance?

The same guys who create Chrome have stuffed the web standards with needlessly bloated fluff that makes it nearly impossible for anyone else to implement it. If alternative browsers have to be a thing again, we need a new standard, or at least the current standard with significantly large portions removed.

That’s a very low effort way of underplaying the effect of these communities on the broader FOSS communities. There is a good reason why most FOSS developers/maintainers prefer to keep their personal and unrelated politics away from their project communities. For one, unchecked bigotry in isolated communities can turn bad for the general public - for example, 4chan, kiwifarms, etc. I have heard from more than one source that community engages in hate speech and brigading against people outside the communtiy - one example is visible in this video itself. This is why laws specifying limitation to free speech exists.

Now, even if you neglect the brigading, there is still the problem of support and contribution. Hyprland is a widely used project. Many end users and developers are going to stumble into the discord server either seeking support or with intent to contribute. If they belong to any minority group, they might inadvertently expose themselves to bigotry, bullying and harassment. Now you may be compelled to label this as hyperbole and fearmongering. But this is well known, highly underplayed problem in FOSS communities with numerous examples. There are so many cases where women stopped FOSS contributions because they felt insulted and harassed. This problem is why CoCs exist in the first place.

Nobody can force others to follow CoCs. But as Brodie says, it has become very important for end users to evaluate the projects they use - to see if it is a community they want to ever interact with. Similarly, distros need to decide if they want to expose their users to such a community.

I have seen people describing the code base to be ugly. However, the project itself looks like it will sustain. But don’t go to their discord server for support if you belong to any sort of minority group.

Stop right there, Jio Tan! The same trick doesn’t work twice.

Besides, XZ isn’t the only project in such a danger. Banning doesn’t solve that problem. They need to put in more funding and eyes.

I don’t think they would be in much peace. It was years of their work that was ruined by a person with OCD and valgrind.

We probably never will.

Their display server is Mir. They first chose Wayland. Everyone was excited and started putting their weight behind it. Then their NIH syndrome kicked in and they declared Mir, claiming that Wayland has a lot of deficiencies. Wayland devs contested it and explained why their complaints were wrong. But Canonical never bothered to reply. This irked everyone else and they stayed with Wayland. Eventually, Mir failed to achieve its goal and Canonical decided to convert it to just another Wayland compositor.

Those are only secondary politics in software development. You missed the primary politics of software - the power struggle expressed through code itself. It comes in many forms. But perhaps the most obvious one is the attempt by software corporates to wrestle control and freedom away from the user using DRM, Trusted computing, locked down devices, dark patterns, etc and relegate the user to the status of a renter.

I am tired, in pain and was feeling grumpy when I wrote this this morning.

Disagreement over a distro is nothing worth suffering for. Wish you a speedy recovery and better times ahead.

If you want to flex your experience, I have twice as much as you do, just with Arch. You are just speaking your perspective and extrapolating it to others. Neither the official Arch sources, nor the regular users’ experience match what you say. The argument you made is in complete disregard of the ability, patience or intent of the vast majority of users.

It’s a common trope that I see that newbie Linux users complaining about how Arch users talk down to them. I can see where that comes from.

Arch requires significantly more tinkering to keep it working, compared to Debian. That’s not because of FUD. Arch has a more hands-on philosophy. It even says so on their wiki.

I have seen savvy users jump directly from Windows to Arch without trying easier distros like Mint. But if given a choice, I wouldn’t introduce anyone to Arch as their first distro. Most people are simply not that patient and are likely to give it up as being too hard. They are likely to give in to the actual FUD that Linux is not user-friendly.

It’s not unusual for people who have tasted the freedom that Arch gives you, to think that it’s the easiest distro around. But the Arch way of doing things is alien to most people around. It’s very important to set the expectations straight and not get carried away.

That really isn’t true. Debian packages are often heavily patched and tested to make sure it fits into the rest of the ecosystem. While Arch does it too, they prefer to keep the packages as vanilla as possible - often requiring effort of the user’s side to make it work with the rest of the system. It’s a different philosophy. While Debian tries to be simple by being opinionated, Arch relies heavily on the effort of the users.

Let me start with my unbiased opinion. There’s something for everybody in the Linux land. You have to try different distros out and settle with the one you like most. I usually advocate for the path of least resistance - ie, to start with the easiest distro. Mint is a good first distro. Fedora and Debian are also reasonable choices. But I have also seen a rare few cases where people start directly with a high effort distro like Arch - so it’s not impossible.

For a lot of people, Mint may satisfy their needs - a user friendly distro that needs no tinkering and meets all of their needs. Some people though, like to tune everything. Such people can eventually grow into something like Arch.

I personally like Gentoo. Not because it’s compiled from source, but because it’s easy to work with its Portage package management system. Another one worth trying out is QubesOS, if you’re into security.