Comment by ksjdjwjdj
19 days ago
This is the Linux equivalent of “corpo speak”—as in, it’s complete bs.
The absolute VAST majority of Linux users are not out there forking their own distros or creating their own WMs. They, more often than not, are just fine with using whatever is being cooked up by the big names in the Linux space, people aren’t giving up the “they” just because the “they” is now KDE or GNOME.
Hell, even Torvalds himself has gone on record to say that he just wants his computer to work and is happy using Fedora and GNOME (the very definition of a “they” Linux).
It's not "corpo speak", it's a principle. It's fine if most users use popular stuff instead of creating their own. The point is to empower them to make different choices if they want to. Whether or not they actually exercise this power is irrelevant. The important part is the fact they have this power at all.
I built a freestanding lisp interpreter that runs directly on top of the Linux kernel just to prove this. Zero dependencies, native system call support. I know that everyone is going to want stuff like glibc instead. But it was possible, so I did it.
And this is more of that same type of “corpo speak but for freedom” bs I was referring to—the principle doesn’t matter if the results are the same, in the grand scheme of things it quite literally does not matter if you have the ability to customise the entirety of your system IF you will NEVER actually customize it, and for the absolute vast majority of users that is very much the case.
For those that such options do matter, it is absolutely essential (I’m in this category). But for the common user, it’s just another thing that their system does that they don’t understand and have no desire to spend time learning. Most think like Torvalds himself: they just want a computer that works and gets out of their way.
> But for the common user
I'm arguing against the "common user" migrating to Linux though. "Linux is for people who..." I just didn't want to say it out loud. If this stuff doesn't matter to you, then obviously you shouldn't use it. I'm just trying to convince others that it does matter.
I want Linux to be the programmer's system, and I want a world with more programmers in it. I have no interest in "common users" other than the fact they might one day become programmers themselves.