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Facebook flags Linux topics as 'cybersecurity threats' — posts and users being blocked
(www.tomshardware.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2025
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Linux, and libre software in general, is one of the few impactful tools available to maintain (or reclaim) the sovereignty of our communications, data, and access to the online world. Those things lie at the core of practically everything in our lives, from employment to education to laws to basic human necessities. Given how significantly freedom is being eroded lately, I can't think of many things more important in the long run.
Yes, but many foss is just created with those already in the know about what it does in mind.
FOSS has historically and continues to be unhelpful to many people coming into it. There's often no beginner level tutorials built in, no easily accessible communities that do not have at least one smug asshole that is utterly unhelpful saying things like "just fork it" or "it's not for you".
So if FOSS ever wants to actually position itself as helpful for the common person it needs a lot more people prepared to write these tutorials etc and build them into the software itself, not just assume internet access or that such things can be found online.
The biggest one is the terminal. As far as I'm aware it does not come with a tutorial built in ever on any distro. It does not on first opening it say "hey, here are the things you can do" because the developers do not consider that people might be entirely unfamiliar with such things and/or nobody wishes to write one or include it even if it is written.
So yes, foss is good for freedom but at the expense of having support built in to get people started, unlike many closed sourced software things. I don't therefore see how it is useful to people that have no clue how to get started with it, thus often sending them back to the very things FOSS says they should escape.
Beginner tutorials exist. Have you even tried looking? Linux has better documentation than anything I've seen in any other OS. Man pages, help files, and commented configuration files galore in just about every single Linux distro without any Internet needed, but it sounds like you never even bothered to look for them.
Sure, assholes online exist in Linux communities, but they are EVERYWHERE. We've got a couple right right here. That doesn't exactly distinguish FOSS communities from any other.
Generalizations about all of FOSS based on your limited experience with a few distros is just asinine. FOSS is way more than an operating system.
Expecting a machine to hold your hand through your learning is such a weird form of entitlement and an especially weird distinction to make since no other operating system does that to the level you expect either.
Corporations pay for support services. The code is free (as in speech). No one ever claimed that the support was also (or even should be) free. Microsoft support is a joke. Apple support is mostly just a sales scheme. Linux support forums might be hostile to entitled noobs looking for a handout and a quick fix, but they are fucking heros when given a chance to help those who put in the effort to help themselves.
Linux community has been better at being helpful, though, as the years passed.
...but still freakin' insufferable.
Lime Buzz has a point here.