Wait ... is there a perception (or reality?) that most Linux users are programmers?
I'm an introvert, but all programmers I know use Windows (and badly in the sense they aren't power users).
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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There's some hardcore conflation going on that assumes that people with technical skills will tend to be good at everything, or that they'll gravitate towards the uber-geeky stuff.
In my experience it's a very wide spectrum. Lots of programmers are strictly focused on the language they use and don't care to know anything about the OS, or networking, even computers. They are definitely not jacks of all trades.
There are people who can do programming as well as system administration and build a PC and build some book shelves and so on. But that's a very specific type of person who's a tinkerer and happens to be into programming, it's not because they're a programmer.
Yes, a power tinkerer!
And if something needs to be programmed (or just coded, bcs copypasta), then that's what's gonna happen.
If IT won't accommodate my ticket in the way I want Im just gonna write another ticket for access rights.
In addition to the perception that you have to be "good at computers" (aka a programmer) to use Linux, in my experience a lot of Linux media outlets (websites, YT channels, podcasts, etc) tend to be heavy on advanced features and tools without much explanation in layman's terms and tend to be geared towards an IT professional/hobbyist audience, which can reinforce that stereotype among those (like me) who are not.
Yeah, this explanation makes the most sense to me.
Just a generalisation that "good at computers" is a programmer. So no Apple programmers :P (joking ofc)
Most of the programmers I know (including myself) use Linux or BSD, but that all depends on who you associate with. A lot of companies are purely Windows shops and others just throw their programmers mac books and call it a day. At my last company I was only briefly allowed to use Linux until they decided it was no good as I couldn't use whatever resource intensive corporate garbage security software of the year they bought.
Linux, on the other hand, can easily boot up on a 10-year-old laptop with just 2GB of RAM, and work fine.
I'm not sure a modern day browser would be just fine with "only" 2GiB, unfortunately.
Maybe with zRAM and a bit of swap it could run quite ok 🤷
As long as the drive the swap is on is an SSD, yeah absolutely
4GB works. My kids use a T410 from 2010 with a SSD and it is a pleasant experience for daily use (browsing, YouTube, small Linux games)
I've tried Firefox limited to 1 GB for a laugh. It's usable. It won't do many tabs at the same time but it's usable.
You can actually go lower than that but you'll start to run into limitations with YouTube videos etc.
There are also other browsers out there that are more light-weight but perhaps not as feature-full as Firefox. Giving up extensions alone reduces a lot of complexity. If you fire up the package installer on any Linux distro and search for "browser" you'll find a ton. There aren't many engines but there are a lot of browsers.
Lynx 4 Life!
There's Linux dists that can only requires less than 200 MB of RAM. Absolute Linux for an example, has a minimum system requirement of 64 MB RAM. Plenty of space left for memory hungry softwares like a browser.
That's what palemoon is for. It wouldn't be my first choice, but if you don't have the RAM to run ~~crysis~~ librewolf on high it'll work.
I’m not sure if this is part of the “frequency illusion”, but I’ve noticed a lot more mainstream media talking about Linux as a viable alternative.
I feel like Linux would be easier to pick up and use for a non power user starting from scratch like my mother-in-law. It's so much easier to download programs with the package manager and settings are so much easier to navigate
And to use the computer without being bombarded by ads
Helped my SO fix Sims 4 on her W11 laptop recently; lock screen ads, start menu ads, pre-installed bloatware begging for money
I even asked how she deals with all of that and she basically said “I dunno it just does that, if you can make it stop that'd be nice ig but just get Sims to worl for now”
Needless to say I got Sims 4 to work (removing cachedir did the trick) AND uninstalled the bloatware and turned off ad-related settings
I find it amazing that so many distros with volunteers manage to curate a vast software ecosystem, reasonably successfully and yet some of the largest companies on the planet, worth more than $1T each cannot manage to find the resources to do it efficiently.
Imagine firing up a cmd or ps prompt in Windows and tying in: msiexec install adobe-hipster-app and it just works.
I don't even know how to write "hello world" in python but I use vanilla Arch XD
Same here, I work in the arts and can't code a thing, but I use Arch (btw) as my daily driver.
If I recall correctly Arch has ... ssh into wifey's laptop ... python installed out of the box.
Run up a console and type python, and hit enter. Type in print ("Hello World") and hit enter. There you go!
If you lack a python: $ yay -S python.
This goes hard
It was my first Linux distro after using Microsoft stuff for ages and let me tell you: it was a big mistake. It was absolutely confusing, had to use terminal for so many things with even msdos commands that I forgot that existed, broke it 3 times by just trying to automount the other drivers and a host of other things.
End up switching to Linux mint and the transition went much smoother after that. I'm going back to it eventually though. I actually like it a lot.
EndeavourIS is the Arch for people like you 😉 (and me)
I can't program, but I only use Linux on both my laptop and desktop. All I really do on my computers is browse the web, light photo/video editing, print the occasional document, organize my photos, and play A LOT of video games. I was dual booting windows for a bit there for the games that won't work on Linux, but I soon discovered that those games weren't really worth dealing with the annoyances I had with windows for how often I actually wanted to play them... except CoD, but I have an Xbox so I just play that there. Deleting my windows partition was a great choice.
I'm a video producer and writer, I only use linux.
Ooh, does Linux have good open source video editing? I remember back in the day that was tricky. (Or I am misremembering.)
I do video editing myself in Linux and Kdenlive does pretty much everything I need. The UI is a bit odd to learn but I'd imagine any new editing software is gonna have a learning curve of some sort.
Not open source but DaVinci Resolve is the best editor around and supports Linux.
I'm not a programmer and I've been dual booting for 25 years.
God I hate what the modern Internet does to my brain. I had to double check if that laptop is AI generated
It's such an old laptop to feature in an article. I even opened the image URL to see if it's one How to Geek just had on file they used. The photo was uploaded last year
"Workflow". There it is.
@petsoi Beautifully written perspective; the KDE Activities bit of that was my favorite! Multiple workspaces on a single monitor is probably one of my most advocated features. I'm telling someone about it at least once a week, even if it's just showin em how to use the cut-down one on their windows machine.
Why are so many Linux posts about "Why Linux" these days? We already use Linux. Isn't there news on Linux anymore or what?
2007 was YOTLD for me. Yours, dear Windows-using reader, is 2024, if you want it to be.
I started using Linux prior starting programming..
But knowing some programming languages will not help much maintaining a linux distribution, tho
The problem solving though?
Hmm, maybe, but I would say understanding normal behaviour of bash commands and what drivers are does not directly involve knowing about coding.