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520 points

This kind of gatekeeping and elitism is bad for Lemmy and for FOSS.

It makes this community a less welcoming place and leaves new folks with a bad first impression. Much better to be welcoming and let people learn/see the benefits of FOSS at their own pace.

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48 points

100% agree. Going “haha, aren’t I COOL for NOT using this one popular app or software!?” contributes absolutely nothing and actively makes the community uninviting. I’m all for FOSS, but if a closed-source app is better than the FOSS options, I ain’t gonna knock on anybody for using it.

Also why even use an app outside of accessibility reasons? Been using Kbin on a mobile browser and it’s been a pretty good experience.

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105 points

This is why I unsubscribed from the Android community. I love Android, I use nothing but Linux at home and really appreciate open source software.

But the FOSS…enthusiasm is starting to border on zealotry. It’s getting really unpleasant.

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39 points

Try to tell the Linux users on here that you prefer to use Windows…

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9 points

Or Chrome over Firefox

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19 points

I love Linux. I love the flexibility it gives me and I enjoy tinkering when I feel like it and having something rock solid and reliable when I don’t. I don’t game on the PC, so this works out great for me. However, my use case isn’t everyone else’s, and part of the idea of giving people freedom to use their computer the way they want is accepting that sometimes they want to use their computer in a way that you don’t like.

Maybe that means using a proprietary operating system. Maybe it means using a search engine that you don’t like. But that is what works for them, and sometimes I think the open source people operate on the fallacy of “there’s two types of people, those who use FOSS and those who haven’t found FOSS yet”, and it’s just so obnoxious.

You think people go nuts when you tell them you prefer WIndows? Wait until you see their heads spin when I tell them that while I use Arch Linux, I also use Google Chrome, Telegram, Spotify, and Discord…

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10 points

I had to leave the Linux memes community because I swear nearly every post was shitting on Windows. Yes, I get it. Windows isn’t all that great. But, much like Ios, it just works for what I need. And I haven’t had any issues that weren’t ny fault with it.

If the game I play most, and the number one reason why i go on my pc, works on Windows, but won’t work on Linux. Which OS is better for me?

I thought all this software war crap era was over. That was shit I cared about when I was 14 or something. Just let it herself use what they want and explain the benefits of alternatives, only if they care.

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20 points

I use Linux as my daily driver, yet I 100% believe Linux is overrated. It’s great if you’re willing to put in the work to get it working well, or maybe if you have someone else to do all your tech support for you, but it’s just not a good option for the majority of people.

I hate when people keep trying to push it on Windows users, especially when they go on about how “easy” it is. It’s not. And doing that will get people to try it out with high expectations and then get disappointed when they try it out and that’s not the case.

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3 points
*

Linux fanaticism drives me crazy. I’m definitely not saying this is true of everyone, but the very nature of Linux seems to attract many elitists who are against unified vision, accessibility, and the unfun amount and types of work required for testing quality and compatibility. The result is that for the foreseeable future, desktop Linux is a mess for everyone, and unusable by the masses. And while I’ll get downvoted for saying that (and for saying the rest of this), I feel like many Linux fanatics secretly like that “normal peasants” can’t effectively use Linux.

I will take some corporate bullshit that works, over only-half-working FOSS any day of the week. And I’m not shitting on FOSS itself. I’m just saying Linux is a disorganized and unfriendly mess. I never did get any sound whatsoever working on my i7-6700 and MSI gaming motherboard in Ubuntu, no matter how long I screwed around with Linux. And that was just to start. I wanted to love and use Linux, I really did.

Lastly, I just want to say I’m super happy with the other responses from Linux fans in this thread. They seem to understand that Linux is overrated, isn’t for everyone, doesn’t always work, and that Linux-pushers can be obnoxious. I super appreciate that understanding, fam.

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216 points

I’d given up on lemmy because every so I had tried was unfinished and unpolished. I tried sync and finally felt like the user experience wasn’t getting in the way of content.

I’d love to support foss, if a genuinely comparable experience existed.

I’m glad to say that sync has revived my interest in lemmy.

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40 points
*

You should check out Thunder, even if you gave it a try at some point - it’s super polished and it’s gotten even better week after week. In my opinion it has the best compact mode of all the lemmy clients, as long as you don’t mind swipe actions!

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13 points

Not OP, but I’ve tried thunder. It’s OK. Sync is light years above all other clients I’ve tried. (same with reddit as well) swipe actions? Sync is the king of swipe actions.

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28 points

I was using Thunder last week until Sync’s open beta got approved and the User Experience and the interface of Thunder is nowhere near Sync. It’s a night and day difference, and a difference that would have made me use Lemmy less and less.

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8 points

FOSS doesn’t need your support. You misunderstand the relationship. FOSS is looking out for you.

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13 points

I see the upvotes but I cannot support this comment. FOSS could use a lot more support at every level, including users.

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1 point

Username checks out. Wait I know this face from masto - I think I follow you!

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5 points

I’m glad to say that sync has revived my interest in lemmy.

Seconded

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9 points

IMO FOSS has really great offerings when it comes to libraries or other highly technical code.

But something about either the community or incentive structure results in sub-par UI/UX. Obviously not a rule, but definitely a trend I’ve noticed.

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-2 points

Lemmy is just new. The best desktops that exist are FOSS.

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9 points

Don’t forget the community’s reaction to comments like yours, why down vote him if he’s stating the obvious? FOSS projects often focus so much on technical features because everyone wants to flex their code-fu, but nobody gives enough time to UI/UX. Just look at pretty much every Lemmy web frontend, fugly webpages with early 2000s look-and-feel, usually slow and/or buggy, and with little to no user feedback.

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3 points

I’ve seen it for years and years now, and I can only conclude that it’s down to the kinds of people who are attracted by these kinds of projects.

They’re tech literate at a professional level by necessity in order to engage with these things at an early time in their development, and this seems to drive a mentality that makes UX design kind of an afterthought, since they already know how to do the things they want the software to do, and they’re not focused on how less tech literate users will handle it.

Then you add in the small minority of gatekeepers that wind up in every community, who feel that a larger, more generalized userbase would be invading their niche community, and you end up with stuff like the Linux forums where asking a simple question would get you a series of remarks that essentially boil down to “go fuck yourself, you should know how to do it already.”

I feel like the people concerned with UI/UX come into these kinds of projects later on after they’ve matured a little, rather than right from start, and this causes resistance to their changes because the userbase is already entrenched in the current UX, especially from the gatekeeper folk in the community who see a higher tech literacy threshold as a good thing.

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1 point

Memmy is gr8

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1 point

Good for you, I personally prefer Thunder

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2 points
*

It’s been one year of this conversation, but I just found it now.

Sync has also made me use Lemmy more often, but I was still missing a good web environment until recently when I started using photon. It is the best web experience I had using Lemmy and now I’m using as a progressive web app.

Photon repository here! Give it a star or start contributing to it.

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14 points

Also sometimes the FOSS software sucks compared to the non-open alternatives.

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12 points

I don’t understand how promoting FOSS in favor of proprietary software is bad for FOSS?

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5 points

This is not promoting FOSS. This is mocking closed-source/paid Lemmy clients.

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-1 points

Dood the automod is wild… people getting banned for, “suspicious activity”… and then there’s no way to ask the mods why the ban.

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2 points
*

Btw, the automod is ONLY a service from us, that you are getting notified when something got removed from you. If you mean the @AutoMod@lemmy.world

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