TC on open source evangelists
TechConnectify@mas.to - Oh my gosh I just figured it out.
Okay, all you open source evangelist people: your knee-jerk reaction to come at people who are talking about a problem with whatever commercial software they use and suggest Your Favorite Alternatives™ is exactly like saying "why don't you just buy a house?" to someone complaining about their landlord.
TechConnectify@mas.to - Actually, to borrow from @DoubleA, it's worse than that.
It's like talking to someone who is in a crappy apartment as though they have the agency and skills to stake out a plot of land and build their own home.
You have to be at peace with the fact that some people just want to exist and not worry about so many things. And they still have a right to complain about their situation.
Link to thread: https://mas.to/@TechConnectify/111539959265152243
Damn, I didn't know people couldn't financially afford installing Linux.
"Open source is free if you don't value your time." (forgot who that quote is from)
Sometimes the time investment is small, but especially for complex software, the friction of switching from one imperfect (proprietary) software to another imperfect (open) software makes it not really make much sense unless the issue is severe (house is half destroyed).
This is basically what he was saying. Open source tends to be a much less plug-and-play out-of-the-box experience, and usually requires at least some IT know-how for it to not be an infuriating experience. A lot of FOSS advocates compensate for that by kind of being that over explaining bro meme and get kinda pushy about getting people over the technical barriers because they want FOSS to be widely adopted and be a real alternative, and for good reasons. But most people don't have the time or patience to stumblefuck their way through IT issues, they just want the shit to work.
It's a fair criticism, accessibility is a big problem in FOSS. We've come a long way, but there's still a long way to go.
If that's what he was trying to say, he's doing a bad job.
The only thing you need to buy a house is money. You don't need literally any money to use FOSS.
Well, it's mastodon. You've got a little over 400 characters to say what you're going to say in the most shocking, attention-getting way possible. Yes, it's not a perfect analogy, but no metaphor is perfect or else it wouldn't really be a metaphor, would it?
Anyway, it's a time and convenience cost that becomes extremely significant as your IT proficiency decreases, and you've got another think coming if you think those costs don't matter to people.
It's not an "imperfect" metaphor, just a bad one.
Okay, I guess. This isn't really a hill I'm prepared to die on. The point is that it's still a cost that's real to the user, even if it's not a direct financial one.
"Help, I can't afford rent!" -> "Buy a house, stupid."
"Help, this software is buggy and unintuitive!" -> "Try using buggier and more unintuitive software, stupid."
Seems like a solid metaphor to me.
Kind of off topic, but you can change how many characters your mastodon instance allows. Mine allows 1337 (for some reason) and I know many have it unlimited. I don't know about TC's instance.
Probably because it's leet.
Good to know, thanks!
For the last decade my job has consisted of helping IT administrators manage open source software. Even if they've got all the certifications in the world they get stuck. A lot. Like, so much that I'm amazed the Internet works at all.
And then the get angry, like the computer is going to respond to their anger. They stop reading error messages. They forget to look at logs. They can't just stop and read and think.
The computer doesn't care that you're angry. It's a Turing machine, and it can do anything a Turing machine can do provided it's told to do the correct things.
Time is money after all.
You can ask a CEO to waste hours upon hours learning Linux, or they could install Windows and make bank using the hours saved.
Better comparison would've been something like "Annoyed with your landlord? Go build a cabin in the woods!". Like, that's straight-up appealing to some people, but it's also not just something anyone and everyone can do.
Even then that's not that accurate, more like move to a different place. It's inconvenient and might not have all the same things you wanted/liked from your old place but you can actually change things in the new place if you really want to
More like moving to France. For me it wouldn't be an issue. My french isn't bad and I learn languages quickly.
I assume that's not true of everyone, just like everyone isn't great at PC stuff.
Then you find out that while the new place doesn't have the problems the old place had, it has a whole new set of problems.
Sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don't.
It is the same reason why tons of airports still run on Windows XP.
They already have documented every single issue that could even happen and their solution. Having a new OS would mean new problems that won't be solved in less than 5 minutes. Which at an airport could mean lives are at stake.
Guy wanted to vent about smart thermostats, explicitly said he doesn't need advice and got bajillion responses with advice, mostly from FOSS folks who couldn't contain themselves. I'd be annoyed too.
When I say "don't think of a panda", what do you think of? Pretty much the same thing with saying "don't recommend me FOSS options" lol
No. Thinking about the panda is involuntary in that scenario. Typing up and submitting an explicitly unwanted response is not involuntary. It's a thing a person chooses to do expressly against the wishes of the person making the request.
Ya, implying recommending FOSS options is an involuntary action was tongue-in-cheek.
I'm on lemmy. Obviously, I think about Marxism-Leninism.
Not Motorhead?
https://charlies-names.com/en/lemmy/
That's the biggest annoyance with mastodon
Translation:"I refuse to try the thing that people tell me might make my life better. I prefer to rant and complain to random strangers on a public forum rather than accepting that a solution to my problem may exist"
It's funny, this is not at all his stance when it comes to hardware and appliances. It doesn't even sound like something he'd say.
The whole point is that a bunch of people don't have the technical skills to figure out FOSS. Sure, sometimes the ux is just as good as the main competitor, but in my experience, usually it isnt and has a decent learning curve
I'd be more sympathetic to that mindset if it was anyone other than TC saying this. He's a smart dude and I have every confidence he could figure out how to use a new piece of software.
I think he's talking in general. But who knows.
He is, very obviously.
Some of his recent rants have been about technology that is actively unfriendly to people who are not good with technology. That doesn't mean he cannot figure it out, but it means his parents can't.
Inevitably people show up to suggest a giant convoluted solution based on the power of open source. Menu poorly worded on the ecobee? They should be using home assistant anyway!
.. could.
Or he (and anyone else) could go and do one of 20000 other potentially way more interesting things with their life.
Imagine that?
He is a smart guy but that doesn't mean he knows everything. I've never seen him demonstrate proficiency in software.
ui/ux sucks because it is hard to onboard designer into FOSS logic.
True with QA, technical writers and PMs too
It's an interesting take from a tech YouTuber to say they are not good with tech
He's noticed an issue that people who are into tech always push complicated things onto non techies. I don't see how that is contradictory or weird...
This was a case of people coming to him
This.
Last month, I installed Mint, which is my first ever Linux install. I chose it because people said it would be the most hassle-free.
The bugs currently plaguing me include:
But the big one, the one that made me stop and think, was the keyboard. Right out of the box, my function keys (brightness, airplane mode, etc) would not work. This turned out to be because the laptop was not recognizing its keyboard as a libinput device, but treating it as a HID sensor hub instead. To fix it, I had to:
For me, this was not a big deal. It did take me two evenings to solve, but that's mostly because I'm lazy. But for someone with low technical literacy (such as my mom, who barely grasps the concept of ad blockers in Google Chrome), every one of these bullet points would be a monumental accomplishment.
The FOSS crowd can be a bit insular, and they seem to regularly forget that about 95% of the people out there have such low technical literacy that they struggle to do anything more involved than turn on a lightbulb.
I follow him on Mastodon, and I think many regular users misunderstand his specific problems. They're unique due to his huge number of followers, and I think that if we want Mastodon to grow, it wouldn't be a bad idea to include more tools for folks with large followings.
I think Mastodon conceptually doesn't care about big users. And they don't care about growing. Gargeon certainly has as many followers as anyone and certainly understands any associated problems.
That's fine, but we need to just admit that and stop trying to get the big users to stay by sheer force of will. Either give them the tools they need or accept that Mastodon isn't for them and that they'll go elsewhere. You can't have it both ways.
What I'm saying is no one cares if they stay or go.
Clearly they do care though. Look at all of the earnest replies to his posts! If folks didn't care, they would say as much.
When I say to my sister "I will literally buy the house for you, help you move in, and give you my phone number you can call any time you need any help with it" and she comes back with "I'd rather sit here and complain about my landlord" I think I have a right to get angry
you have to admit this is one hell of an edge case. the vast majority don't have your sister's 'problem'
I think the majority of us also don’t want to play tech support.
You haven’t seen the FOSS community then
Also you will have to play tech support no matter what if you set them up
Or you will need help and ask questions and people will assume you are "lazy asking" and be toxic just because you are a beginner and don't know stuff. Recently I've lost count on how many projects I joined some kind of communication space like Discord and left as soon as I saw how awful people can be when they want to gatekeep
I don't like helping non-tech people because they don't want to learn. They just want it fixed. I understand the mindset and I'm that same way on other things. But I don't want to be their "tech guy".
I do like helping in the FOSS community though because people generally do want to learn.
the sword is double edged, the ones you neglect will come to you when it gets bad.
Which is why me and people like me don’t care much what our relatives use :D
If I had you as a sibling I would use a lot more foss stuff then lol.
Yeah, and that is their opinion, which is as valid as yours.
They are the ones who will have to use the software day in and out, they should be the ones to decide which software they use.
okay but you still don't get to act like i'm saying "just buy a house!"
@morrowind funny to find this here when I wrote my reply just a while ago:
How many times have you setup Fedora or any other Linux distribution and have every single thing working from the get go?
I'm talking drivers, audio, networking, libraries, DNF, repositories, plugins, runtime dependencies, ...
And don't forget, plenty of popular software isn't even compatible. Meaning you got to use alternative software that doesn't always do what you want it to do.
"Every"
Is proprietary software any easier than that though? Don't you have to put in much more time removing all the spyware and bloat they put in and then spend all your time perpetually fighting against forced updates and applications being installed without your permission?
Whereas with Fedora my experience is more or less install it and forget it.
The "it's easier" argument for proprietary software I think died at least 15 years ago.
Choice of applications is a different argument.
Yes, take nvidia drivers for example, on windows I just download the installer and run it and done.
Last time I tried to move to Linux desktop (attempted Fedora and then EndeavourOS) about a year ago, none of that worked properly. Installing drivers was not in any way straightforward, needing CLI commands and google, where every guide I found seemed to have a different method used to install them, I kept getting outdated ones, and I had no idea what I was doing.
At the end of all that I still didn't have HW acceleration in my browsers, my desktop had screen tearing, gsync didn't work properly in windowed apps, the GPU wouldn't downclock fully at idle like it's supposed to, I couldn't figure out how to get shadowplay working, and so on.
And yes I do know this is technically mostly nvidia's fault for not having as good quality of drivers on linux. But as an end user all I care about is that my stuff works properly without googling things, needing the CLI, and spending a lot of time on it.
Definitely not, I don't really spend much time at all. I haven't experienced forced updates, my apps just update through winget manually when I want to. There are a few extra apps I don't need on windows but those take a minute to remove, I can't say I've ever experienced an app being installed without my permission other than edge I guess, but that replaces IE for embedded browser stuff so it's kind of needed.
Most of my 'admin' time is spent on the opensource apps I use, generally on my self hosted stuff. But also just on basic things like backup software, Veeam is my primary backup which is basically a 1 minute set up with a few clicks through the GUI, but I've been trying out Restic too which requires writing my own scripts to handle backups, more scripts to handle pruning and such, manually installing them as services so they run properly, and writing my own notification system on top of that just to get an email if something goes wrong.
Opensource is great, but it's usually extremely time intensive to get the same results, with lots of documentation, google, and just wasted time trying to figure out the basics.
Admittedly I do have the bias of experience which could blind me to the difficulties, when I phrased my first two sentences as questions they were genuine questions. Between work and personal life I must've installed Linux in some form at least 200 times over the last 20 years, so I'm not most users.
I've also not used Windows in many years, the last I think was when I had to use Windows 7 for work about 10 years ago and I found it extremely difficult to get it to do what I want. If it's improved then it's improved.
On the other hand a novice user can ask somebody to install Linux for them, what about that? That's what my non-techy parents have done, and it's easier for them to use Linux (they say so) and easier for me to provide technical support for them.
Also yes, avoid Nvidia.
Yes we do get sort of blind to what the average non-tech person wants out of their computer, I certainly have plenty of Linux experience on servers, but that just doesn't seem to translate across to being able to easily troubleshoot desktop Linux issues. I think because a server is a 'set up once' type thing, whereas running linux on my desktop feels like a constant battle with installing programs, and driver updates or new versions of a game breaking things.
IMO windows has vastly improved since W7. I can't even remember the last time I had to troubleshoot a game or program not working properly. I have W11 on 3 PCs and it's been extremely stable, almost every program other than games is installed via the winget package manager which also handles updates, and it doesn't get that 'windows slows down over time' feeling that used to happen on 7, vista, etc.. Obviously there's some bloat to remove when you first install it, and a few annoying settings to change, but that's not that big of a deal to me and I spend just as much time on a fresh linux install getting things how I want them.
As far as the GPU choice, right now nvidia just makes a better GPU IMO, with their DLSS and frame-gen that AMD so far can't compete with. Shadowplay also works a lot more reliably than ReLive in my experience. I briefly had an RX 6700XT for a few weeks before returning it due to driver/software issues.
I spend enough time fixing IT things at work and on my selfhosted server stuff, I just want to get home, hit the power button on my PC and play some games or work on some code for a project without anything getting in the way.
Yep, got the same experience as you. Not with nvidia drivers bit my huawei laptop had a broken audio driver where only half of the speakers worked.... Unless you plugges in a headphone... Then the headphone and the other half of the speakers worked.... All in all, it took me at least a da to get that working
Also, still no fingerprint support....
You can do a lot with opensource and tailor it to your need, but you have to invest a lot of time... And that's what a lot of people don't have
That is the thing, the software will function even with all the spyware and bloat.
Doesn't bother a non-tech person.
Or could it be that it might bother them but they just keep quiet and put up with it, assume that it's part of owning a computer and feel powerless to change anything?
With 0 experience with linux i installed nobara without any problems. I didnt need to install anything else(edit: excluding the software you can install in the "welcome" app), to change something in the settings etc
The only "hard" thing i had to do was to disable secure boot in the BIOS
I think you are talking about the situation that might be true 15 years ago, vut right now you'll be hardpressed to find anything that doesn't work out of the box on any modern distribution. I don't know what plugins and dependancies don't work on your machine, but I assure you it's not a universal experience, far from it.
Also, most of the software that you use on Linux is free, so you don't "buy" new couch if your old is built specifically for your old house, you learn to sit on any of the new ones that you can get for free at any moment
I say this over and over again, but I'm going to say it again. I disagree firmly with the second point because there is such a lead and usability and ease of use for popular commercial software such as Microsoft office and Adobe software. It's available in so many languages, it has so much functionality, and yes, both surpass FOSS solutions by a wide margin in functionality.
If you don't need Excel, I think Linux and libre office might work fine for a lot of people, but there are still gaps in usability and accessibility. I don't really see the same for anything Adobe does in the Linux space however.
Linux is like 90% of the way there, but these are people with jobs and families and shit. You can't expect them to spend time having to overextend themselves with technology.
I wasn't saying that we have everything available for Linux. Not yet, anyway. I was saying that whatever we have there is usually free and very customisable.
People committing from Windows and especially Mac infrastructure think that since they spent hundreds of dollars on software they use, they will have to do that again if they will swith to Linux. For a lot of people the thought of free software just never crossing the mind
DraugerOS wouldnt even boot from the thumb drive for me. Garuda sort of worked, the live boot was damn near perfect, from a stability and basic performance perspective, but after a basic install there were some annoying artifacts like a block behind the cursor on some windows, steams store page would flash rapidly and performance was trash in any game even on low settings. A Logitech mouse scroll wheel was hit or miss working. I mean like you spin the wheel and while the wheel was free spinning the browser would start and stop responding to it. 8 hours of messing with kernels, drivers, and settings it I threw in the towel. Not worth the effort to just get it to run normally let alone
Arch was similarly poor performance. Mint was also poor performance. Im not a fan of the PopOS style, but it actually ran great on my machine so, I'll take it.
Point being, I tried 4 different distros before finding one that worked mostly well out of box.
Edit: wrong name for draugeros
Where the fuck have you found whatever weird esoteric distribs you are talking about, and why on earth did you went with those? Depending on the answer to the question, I kind of understand how you managed to make Arch "perform poorly" whatever that means in that regard, you need to have at least basic understanding to use Arch (or treat it as an opportunity to learn).
But you don't start your experiments with something from third page of Google, at that point you're an alpha tester.
Google best gaming Linux distros. DraugerOS, Garuda, and popos are all prominent distros focused on gaming.
DraugerOS is Ubuntu LTS based.
Mint, not gaming focused, has been around for ages and is Ubuntu based. I've used it previously on older hardware with no issue. Just apparently doesn't like newer hardware.
Garuda is arch based, probably why it was such a pain.
Popos is Ubuntu based as well.
I've also tried KDE plasma, ubuntu based, and man was that slow as hell. Works great on some hardware not on the hardware I tried.
I've installed Ubuntu in the past and had WiFi driver issues.
You mentioned any modern distros should work out of the box. The only one listed that mostly worked out of the box with semi reasonable performance was popos.
if someone is looking to install a distros to play games, theyll probably google "Linux for gaming" install one of the prominent distros listed above geared toward gaming then bang their head against the wall and quit.
We may understand arch is a full time job, but when Joe from sales builds a new gaming rig and took someone's advice to install Linux and save money he doesn't know all Linux distros are not created equally. Maybe he gets garuda or draugeros and bangs his head against the wall then goes back to windows.
There are a million different distros and yes some of the major ones work fine, but not always and if you run into issues it can be exponentially harder to fix the issue especially if you have no IT experience. Making it even worse is toxicity in forums or other support places where people treat you like you should know better because they have of knowledge of Linux and forget that we all have different levels of experience, many people have no experience.
It's somewhere in between, you're not building your own software, but oss software does usually tend to need more work. It's like telling someone with a shitty landlord to move to a new house which they get to own, but it has no paint, or lighting, or flooring and they have to move their furniture and learn a different layout
And If it doesn't require more work, it requires different work. The beast you know is easier and more comfortable to understand than the beast you don't know, even if it would be more beneficial to learn to deal with the newcomer.
Or even, just move to my building that has a much better landlord, but it's a 5 storey walkup.
Some folks will be able to use that no issue, some folks might bitch but be happy in the end, and for some folks it'd be a nigh impossibility to do so.
And all of that, provided the house they have to be in, is within their control.
Well. And maybe the new house doesn't support their bed.
i mean yeah but they can just dual boot to metaphorically keep the old house too
sleeping and living in different houses, with your original house able to "accidentally" blow up your new one at any point.
Or you can just keep your old house where everything works, and the only annoying thing is the landlord.
Just gotta figure out if you're ok with your landlord reading your diary.
Most people are completely fine with it.
Isn't the point that you don't have a choice to just buy a house, because there are obstacles that prevent it. In the same way, I don't have a choice to use Linux or whatever other foss alternative to the stuff I use daily because my laptop is owned by the company I work for and their policies dictate that it runs windows etc.
Are you trying to gather a lynch mob here? I think posts like these are quite bad taste. Most wont have a good understanding of the situation.
Does this really fit this community?
I agree. As inaccurate as Technology Connection's statement is, this post here is kind of...distasteful.
Is there a community where a take like this would be considered and welcome? Asking because I would like to follow that community…
same tbh
I think it's a discussion worth having, since it's clearly a recurring problem.
with all do respect, what discussion can we have here other than dunking on technology connections with an out of context post that misses the second post that clarifies what hes actually saying?
That's goofy.
It's like someone hearing someone complaining about a slum lord and pointing them to a company that gives out free parcels of land with free trailers on them. It's not usually, like, a mansion, but it'll do.
Are houses free now?
Exactly! I actually talked back and forth with him a bit and eventually said that "complaining about a missing FOSS feature is like complaining to the volunteer ladeler at a soup kitchen about the lack of a gluten-free option. It's just not the path to getting the change you want."
In the end he seemed to get what I was saying, but was still irritated. I've been really learning lately how hard it is for some people not to see themselves as customers in FOSS land.
It perplexes me, because when people get free stuff that isn't FOSS, they have no place to complain. Their only option is to pay for the software, but most don't. As soon as they see a place they can complain, they go twitter on the place.
People often can't make companies to do stuff even if they pay for it, so that is a really meh argument 😔
Normally, I would reply to the guy, because, you know, he's a human being, but there's so many replies, I doubt, he can actually read all of them and potentially someone else has already made that point.
Anyways, I feel like something he kind of misses here is that many of us do it from a heartfelt place. Like, we're all techies. We've all used commercial software to a point where we've grown so frustrated with it that we decided it is a waste of time.
So, it's not us saying "Why don't you go and just have more time/money?".
Rather, it's us saying "This thing is wasting your time? Here is a solution that I felt wasted less time in the long run.".
Yes, sometimes that does miss the mark, because not every complaint is looking for a solution. Or because we may be frustrated with restrictions of commercial software, which are not a problem for less techy people. Or even because we're embedded in this tech world and are hoping to make it a better place, which someone just quickly visiting may not care about.
But other times, I do just happen to know a lot about technology and a non-techy genuinely did not know about the solution I suggested and is actually really appreciative of me bringing it up. It does happen. And it's not easy to discern who would appreciate a suggestion and who won't.
I actually did jump into the replies and went back and forth with him a bit and I do think he (finally) understood the FOSS perspective. I think a lot of people get very hung up on this concept of a customer-product relationship and for some people it's a very hard mindset to break out of. I often forget that while "FOSS" is software, the "free software movement" is not really about software, it's political.
The political aspect is especially true. The FOSS confusion is often similar to the communism confusion, especially when it comes to small-scale things.
Take the concept of a neighborhood garden that no one is expected to pay money into, for instance. "Wait, so the people here who like gardening don't expect me to pay or provide labor unless I'm able to? What do you mean i should take only according to my needs? What about Jimothy, he never helps but he takes way more than I do! What do you mean Jimothy contributes as he is able or in other ways? How can i trust everyone to be fair?"
Take the money for goods/services exchange out of the equation and it can really throw people off.
You could be tied to a specific piece of shit you don't like because it's what your job requires you to use.
I had to work with Salesforce and when I'd complain about it, Id be given all sorts of alternatives. These are nice but... The dude in charge of what the rest of us had to use liked Salesforce, so we all suffered.
Atlassian, too.
In this thread, everyone getting caught up on the first toot and not the second where he clarifies his point.
If you step past the initial investment of buying a house, the analogy makes perfect sense. When you rent an apartment, your landlord (the provider) takes care of all the maintenance; you just live there and you get what you get. When you own a home, you take care of all of the maintenance, but you get to set the place up however you like. This isn't that different from a lot of FOSS out there.
To be fair, the second part is not included in the image.
Lemmy doesn't allow for multiple images as far as I'm aware, so I did the next best thing: put it in the description
Not saying I blame you; you're bound by the limitations/restrictions of the platform.
I'm just saying it's not as obvious and so others may not have noticed it. :)
this is a dirty lie :P
So why didn't he include the second part in the first post? Almost send like he WANTS people to misunderstand. I can't understand why he's even on fedi when all he ever does is try to stir the pot
Doesn't Mastodon have only 300 characters like old Twitter?
"This program is really expensive and I keep having to buy a new computer every two years because it gets so slow."
You're being fucked with, when there are alternatives out there.
But that is none of my business.
Alternatives aren't always a solution.
You can't know until you try it.
Professionals are trained on already available answers, often target marketed, which moves forward the penetration of such answers into broad society.
This does not mean they are good or bad, just popular.
Any alternative solution will always be compared to the more popular, even if better.
No you definitely can know.
Because if your company tells you you should use this software, you do not get a say in what software you use.
So it is either this, or nothing.
Funny how we jumped from an implied personal use to an enterprise use all of a sudden.
To which the same basic rules apply. The added problem on enterprise is that you have legally binding contracts to force the company to stay with a bad software.
You are not buying a house, if the software is free it's more like a expropriation
this is a really dumb take lmao
What do you mean not every casual computer user wants to wrestle with drivers, troubleshooting and running everything through wine all the time?
I literally cannot remember the last time I had a driver issue with Linux but go off
Try being stuck with an Nvidia card
( // out of the loop ) who wants to catch me up on the whole Nvidia thing lol
They've never released proper open-source drivers for Linux, or helped external developers make any, or made it easy to use their closed driver with Linux. They're just hostile to open source, basically. That used to be pretty common in the old days, but most companies have given up and joined in, which is why installing Linux is usually a smooth experience these days.
If you're using Linux: get an AMD card. They just work out of the box, no failures to boot to GUI or anything. It just works...like everything else. Which, having spent 20 years fighting with graphics drivers on Linux, is sheer bliss to me.
Oh, but the defacto standard for anything AI-related is NVidia. So if you ever wanna mess with LLMs, object detection, speech recognition, etc...you're likely stuck with NVidia, and the old routine: Got a problem? Of course you do. Try reinstalling the drivers three times, then uninstall some random other packages, then burn some incense, say 10 Hail Marys, and make an offering to the GPU gods before restarting the computer. Didn't work? Well, repeat all those steps in a different order. Fifth time's the charm!
If you want to mess with AIs... there are cloud servers you can rent for a few cents on the hour with some blazing fast NVidia cards, that come with all the drivers and some toolkits already preinstalled.
As long as you don't forget to shut them down when not in use, they can turn out to be cheaper than a single GPU, with none of the hassle.
Nvidia is notorious for having bad drivers and they serialized their cards so people can’t fix it
Thanks
I've been using Nvidia and Linux for 13 years. I'll repeat:
Then you are luckier than most.
Haven’t had any
Older cards work fine at this point on xorg, if you bought a newer card and are expecting anything special then you kind of need to own that you fucked up.
Pre Linux 2.6
Multiple monitors, touch screens, tablet digitizers remain a letdown constantly. Not always fully broken, but falling just short enough that actually fixing it is a pain and just living without the feature (or Linux) is easier.
Except it is actually the inverse. FOSS is usually free to access and fork. Whereas commercial walled gardens cost you thousands.
The cost of something isn't always in the form of money. In many cases with Foss there are comprises in either simplicity, stability, documentation, or compatabiliry.
For instance I can boot my machine into a live garuda instance and it runs great, but as soon as I install it, it runs like trash. I spend something like 3 hours fiddling trying to get it going then wipe and try to install smaugos and it wont even boot. I install debian and it works okay but sluggish. Popos works fine. 2 days of fiddling around and I find something that works. Windows may cost more than just money, but it worked out of the box and I didn't have to fiddle or try a bunch of different distros. We can go down that rabbit hole, but let's look at other things.
Foss often has volunteer support that can be hit or miss and often requires more advanced knowledge of the os or software. There's also often toxicity like people shaming for not knowing everything about the application or os. Commercial support is often dedicated and may even remote into your computer. I'm not saying Foss can't do that, but I've never heard of it for free.
FOSS doesn't work nearly as easily or reliably as commercial software a lot of the time. Nextcloud is a good example. There are a million ways to install it, but now you need to learn docker, or how to setup a web server and even then maybe the docker image is buggy or straight up doesn't work. The different Linux distros is another example.
Then there's the learning curve. Even if FOSS has 1:1 parity in functionality, it often comes at the cost of learning a LOT about a new application, or the functionality is different or harder to use compared to a commercial alternative.
Don't get me wrong I live foss. I self host, I'm slowly getting rid of windows and degoogling. But there is cost to do all of this, even if its not monetary. Plus not everyone has the time, patience, or interest in it.
Then why is photoshop so buggy?
My cracked version seems to be just fine ;)
Because the reason companies are brazen enough to pull the crap that they do is because most people have viewpoints along the lines of this post. Reddit for example has almost certainly performed a cost-benefit analysis and wouldn't have locked down their API like they did if they suspected an actual risk of enough people switching to Lemmy and other alternatives where the lost revenue would have been significant. And they were right, the vast majority of Reddit users tangentially looked at Lemmy and similar alternatives but are still on Reddit. The people actually here on Lemmy saying they'll never use Reddit again are a tiny minority of Reddit's total userbase.
I'm genuinely surprised that a creator who has a ton of op-eds in his videos and constantly pushes for electrification and heat pumps citing their lower environmental impact, which is very correct and noble of him mind you, doesn't apply the same logic to software.
Also, obviously it's not good to be a dick when promoting FLOSS as you're more likely to push people away from it, if that was his point then I'd tend to agree (admittedly I've been guilty of that before). Maybe that's what he meant, but he doesn't mention that in the post and seems to imply that even a friendly or matter of fact suggestion that a FLOSS alternative is available is unacceptable. Like are you complaining just to complain or are you complaining because you want suggestions on how to solve the problem? I don't know what his experience with FLOSS discourse is, but I've personally complained about a proprietary software, had someone point out that an alternative exists, and immediately tried it out and often end up switching. Literally the other day, I was complaining about the Unix
cpcommand, someone suggested I usersyncinstead because "it's better", and what do you know they were right.What an idiotic comparison.
Buying a house costs so much money and time that most people cannot afford to, and those who can generally must go into debt for most of their remaining lives in order to do so. Suggesting FOSS to replace "whatever commercial software they use" is the polar opposite, in that it's literally free (usually in both senses of the word). It's more like suggesting that someone consider a new route to commute from home to work.
Also, this opening...
...is incredibly reductive and combative. The world needs less of that, not more.
Suggesting people 'just' buy a house is unhelpful, because it assumes they have enough money to do so.
Suggesting people 'just' use FOSS is often unhelpful, because it assumes they have sufficient computer abilities and/or have the time to learn how.
Some kid who's just started writing his thesis and enjoys fiddling with stuff? Sure, recommend LaTex.
Some overstretched parent of two, who gets home at 8 and just needs to edit a powerpoint for a presentation at the end of the week? No, suggesting they install a piece of software, something they've never done before, and learn to use this piece of software they've never used, to finish something that needs to be done by the end of the night, and that they're almost certainly going to be using in an office (ie. windows/office) environment? Not helpful.
some people don't know about FOSS alternatives, i dob't think i need a PHD in computer science to idk try kdenlive intead of sony vegas
The difference here is mountains vs. molehills.
And in most cases, they obviously do have sufficient ability to learn how, because they were able to learn the commercial software they're currently using.
As for time, yes, learning always takes time. (Thus my comparison to learning a new commute.) But suggesting that someone learn something new is not stupid or unreasonable, especially if the thing they currently use is not serving them well.
I don't know why you would think that cherry-picked and extremely specific scenario is somehow representative of the general subject we're discussing. Of course situations exist where learning alternative software isn't the best answer. That doesn't make it wrong for people to suggest the alternatives. Quite often, they're perfectly viable, and it's perfectly reasonable to try to help by making someone aware of them.
You should just learn Chinese.
You have a sufficient ability to learn Chinese, you learnt how to speak the language you're currently using.
Learning takes time, but me suggesting you 'just' learn Chinese isn't stupid or unreasonable, especially as your inability to speak Chinese is limiting your audience and career opportunities, and not serving you well.
That's disingenuous. I wasn't complaining about English not serving me well, now was I?
Also, once again, mountains vs. molehills.
English isn't serving you well. You should learn Chinese.
Are you having a problem learning Chinese? You chose Cantonese? Wrong dialect. Should be learning Mandarin, that will solve your issue.
@Hyperreality
"Suggesting people 'just' use FOSS is often unhelpful, because it assumes they have sufficient computer abilities and/or have the time to learn how."
I mean, it took my parents in law 10 minutes to learn and they're almost 80. Realistically, if you're using a computer, you have sufficient computer abilities and time to learn Linux.
If they are almost 80, they have plenty of time on their hands.
Thank you for proving their point.
And no, it didn't took them 10 minutes to learn a whole new OS, that is just dishonest.
.
Be the change, homie.
In any case, do recall that many of us are in enterprise environments where we're not the only decision makers. Plus, FOSS without reliable support contracts isn't workable for many use cases. If something in FOSS goes tits up none of my customers will be satisfied with the great discussion I had with the devs about it and how they'll totally get to it after Furrycon.
You might not be paying for software in money but you're going to pay for it, one way or another.
When someone claims two obviously different things are exactly the same, pointing out that the comparison is idiotic is not combative, homie.
Edit: More to the point, defending one's community by pointing out the idiocy of an attack is not combative.
Indeed. As I hinted in my comment, and stated more clearly in another one.
Cool, I'ma go tell my wife something we disagree on is idiotic and we'll see how it goes. Should be fine, right? It's not combative!
Did your wife go on social media to pick a fight by stereotyping and publicly scolding a large community of people, and justify it with an obviously false claim? I hope not, but if so, then I wish you the best of luck working through that together.
The cost isn’t the software, it’s the time, energy and risk involved in using it.
The combativeness was deployed to fight off combativeness.
It really isn't though.
A day or two or even a week to get the hang of something isn't a 40-year mortgage
Poor people don’t have time above all else. A lot of times they are working 2 jobs, sometimes with those jobs doing shady scheduling where you are essentially on call without being paid for being on call.
Also tons of people just aren’t as smart as you are at computer things. Guess what? If they were you wouldn’t be as cool as you are for being able to do it.
I’ve found everyone has something they can teach me, whether it’s how to be or how not to be.
A great way to use your talent would be to assemble the resources that made you good at something and post it online so others can be lifted up by your knowledge.
Everyone in this entire world’s life is at minimum as complex and nuanced as your own. It’s kinda rough to assume laziness of people you don’t know well.
I’ve been up and down, and I ain’t better than anyone on here, I’m just trying to add a little of my perspective.
This is actually my argument for general consumer AI access. That person you're describing already wouldn't be able to pay an artist for a commission, but they can take 15 minutes to generate some images that make them happy. People deserve anything we can get that brings us joy in this time sensitive world.
Ahhh.... i suck at computers. Nowadays anyway.
But FOSS generally has the tech nerd I wish I was going over it, finding and squawking loudly about vulnerabilities, instead of quietly writing backdoors in.
No, it's not as stable and easy out of the box, but it's less likely to turn you into ICE because your name is half mexican
Open cad just isn't the same though
yeah, freeCAD is kinda crappy compared to even F360
Does Fusion 360 have a free version?
meh, yes and no. typical auto desk shenanigans. free for personal use.
So is it free free, or is it free* for personal use?
As in, can I as an amateur use it with all the functions enabled for an unlimited time without spending money?
Because I can with FreeCAD.
Yep
Ah yes, put your problem out in the internet, then get befuddled when people suggest solutions. Classic.
If they ask help with a problem in software, then telling them to switch to a completely different software is never a solution.
If the software is forced by the company they work for, then they do not have a choice to install a different one.
So stop looking at problems from only your perspective.
It’s the only perspective I have, unfortunately.
There are always two opinions: mine and the wrong one
But they are not solutions to the problem. They are asking you to fully abandon the problem and tackle a completely new set of problems.
The most annoying part is that they know this, they just want to signal their own moral superiority.
Using a different tool is not abandoning the problem.
"Hey, so my car is making a weird noise" "Just go out and get a different car then"
No, not at all. More like, if your car is broken you could also ride a bike, or walk, or take a bus or a cab or a train or an airplane. Sometimes it’s helpful to have solutions presented that you didn’t even think of. Like how you assumed that the only way to deal with a broken car is to fix it or buy a new one. That’s not true at all, and I’m here to help you explore all the ways to solve your problem, not just the ones at the top of your mind at the moment.
Yeah but I wanted my car fixed. Sure I'm riding my bike while it's broken, but I want to fix my car.
"Hey so my free car that was built and maintained entirely by volunteers who received no financial compensation and was provided to me no strings attached is making a weird noise and I don't want to learn how to fix it myself nor am I willing to wait for someone else to fix it, nor am I willing to even tell the car-builders it has a problem."
In this context suggesting they complainer pay for a car doesn't sound so crazy?
No you have it backwards. More like
"hey, this car I bought for a couple grand is being fucky"
"nah man fuck buying a car. Leave that one in the ditch out back, and start driving this one my buddies made and have been fixing for years. Yeah it breaks a lot but hey it's free. Oh you wanna keep using your old car, you just need an oil change? Bitch, what did I say? Use mine."
Oh yeah btw, that new car, gas and brake are reversed. Nonono it's ok just get used to it or you're a dumbass
Ah come on, don't tell me you've never ranted on the internet, with no interest in a solution, just to rant
But he was asking for a solution, people just weren't giving solutions that were suitable
If buying an house was free, you can be sure I would definitely tell that to every fucking anyone.
Very convenient that you left out a lot of context, but I'm an open source enthusiast and he's not wrong.
It's more like telling someone "Why don't you just build your own house?"
brb recompiling my porch
Recompiling my foundation and hoping it still holds the house up when I'm done.
That was true in 2000. The situation had improved a lot by, like, 2005, but it was still pretty rough. You were still likely to have to drop to a console at some point even in 2010.
These days there's 20 distributions that are easier to install, use, and maintain than Windows, and you don't even have to know
lsto use it.That is great!
And how many of those work out of the box on every type of hardware including new laptops without having to look up compatibility?
No operating system meets those criteria, open source or commercial.
I've installed Linux on at least 20 laptops & desktops in the past decade, many for first-time users. I generally go with Mint or ElementaryOS for newbies. I can't remember ever having a compatibility issue. I'm sure they still happen sometimes, but when people talk about it they act like it's still 2005.
I don’t get the comparison.
It is true that it is often cheaper to buy a commercial solution + support in a company, instead of using open source and employing a fleet of admins to support it.
But that sure is not implied in the post.
Who is this and why should we care about his opinion?
He's a pretty awesome educational YouTuber but this is a dumb take. To be fair, he's not a programmer or software guy. I believe his background is in engineering.
Even without being a programmer, associating Free Software with a MASSIVE purchase is bonkers.
I know a lot of people (even people who work in IT) who automatically assume free=shitty. It's hard to appreciate just how effective and influential FOSS has been as a business model unless you are immersed in the world of software.
Classic example of judging a book by it's cover I guess. The fact big tech is embracing open source software more and more, you'd think this assessment should no longer be the case.
It does require a massive amount of time
He's a very good YouTuber who seems to have a side-gig shitting all over the Fedi, fedizens, and generally anyone who holds a different opinion.
My view is that snark attracts snark. I love this guy's videos and how thorough he is in his research and his occasional snide humor is fine, sometimes getting the YouTube comments in a frenzy.
On Mastodon it's harder because that kind of take invites a bunch of replies back, which regardless of how right or wrong you are, engaging in 20 arguments consecutively gets annoying. And being snarky about FOSS stuff on Mastodon stokes massive flamewars if not put under control or not being level-headed.
Being snarky is fine. Turning around and complaining about "harassment" from people after you posted a shit take is not.
Having as many followers as he does on the fediverse right now is difficult. There aren't any tools or options to reduce the flood of notifications you get or do do any sort of sane filtering (especially on mastodon) so i totally understand why he often reacts the way he does. You cant feasibly block or de-federate when your reach is so large.
Valid question. After reading his opinions, why would anyone follow his mastodon?
If he's a good YouTuber, it's like following a footballer who has shit opinions. I'll watch you play football, but screw following your nonsense stream of consciousness.
Not to buy a house but to get a house for free?
He's still being a dick about this?? Thought he'd chilled out a bit but now he's lost all damn sense about the matter. Maybe he's at least gotten past insulting all Linux users in his videos and will be keeping this crap to a somewhat more appropriate environment.
I and a few other people kinda chatted with him a while and the reality kinda seemed to click with him? He was very stuck on "it is a product and I am the customer" mindset that is very ingrained into so many people. He said filing a bug report felt "dehumanizing" and we tried to illustrate that it can actually feel empowering if you view yourself as a collaborator, not a customer. I think he's coming around.
At least I hope he is because (opinion on FOSS aside) he really is one of the all-time best creators on YouTube right now.
You can pay each month or be free forever.
This feels like gossip and I wish that Lemmy would let me mark this post as hidden.
Mastodon, like Twitter is a gossip platform, as far as I can tell. Too bad you can't filter out screenshots of other social media posts en masse.
It looks like what they were trying to convey is apparently that it can be a large time and effort commitment that most people don't have the technical expertise to figure out, which is a fairly reasonable argument in some contexts, but I do not think they conveyed it very well and they're being kind of a dick about it in the replies, so idk. I understand the point, but this is NOT the way to get it across.
This is just wrong, people stay stuck with propertiary software either out of habit or not wanting to learn new things (Assuming there is alternatives ofc). People who rent often have no other option. People who use propertiary software have other options they just don't care ebough to utilize them.
Or they're forced to by corporate. I can complain endlessly about Outlook but guess what? At the end of the day my ass has to use Outlook.
school [._.]
Eh, sounds like the average person in that he just wants to stick to what is familiar to him. Can't save 'em all
It's not always wanting to stick to what they know. I have a few programs I hate and every time I have to use them I try to find a better alternative. Unfortunately, none of the other programs I tried had the functionality I needed to use them.
Thats like the exact opposite
That's use FreeLord the OSS landlord alternative
That makes no sense. I think he should use home assistant for his home automation.