The fedi experience

@MontgomeryGator @funbaker @babe somebody said "printer" ? I regularly get requests from neighbours to help them to rein in their printers, and no, they run Windows or macOS, where it's all "just works (tm)".
Once a wasted a couple of hours, to no avail, on one such case.

My dear better half, a professor of CS in Oxford, asks me to print stuff for her on a regular basis. She does theory, uses a Windows machine. I do it from Linux for her, cause it works much better (or if it doesn't then at least I can see what's wrong).

Don't get me started on proprietary vs free software for printing. Printers nowadays are full of sh*t, don't come with right drivers, etc. Once I went as far as submitting a bug report to Xerox and to Google to enable printing on a Xerox printer from a Chromebook. I told them what file they have to put and where. Xerox never replied. Google replied they have a license problem to add this file to their driver. Screw the user, they won't move a finger...

@babe
I LOVE the idea of open source software, but if it doesn't work well, what the hell is the point?

@babe @TheGreatLlama you feel superior. That’s the point.

@babe that and intrusive hedgehogs (rats, corvids, other nerd-befriending animals)

@teslawf @babe
Lol, I must not need the help.

@babe

You're not wrong lol

@babe LOL, yes this and "You know you could be using Linux which is a much more secure and stable operating system..."

Yeah no, I really don't want to use something that I'd need a dictionary-sized manual to learn how to use

@babe I use Arch, btw...

@babe One of the highest prases you can give software is that "it just works" and I don't think people get that enough

@ShadowInTheVoid @babe pretty sure that's the incantation to summon the spirit of Todd Howard

@OctaviaConAmore @babe Ewwww
I did mean actually just works, not Bethesda "just works" ie doesn't work

@ShadowInTheVoid @babe aaah, common mistake, you've just got to include "actually" in the incantation, then otherwise, you'll get random crashes, texture glitching, and mannikins head-tracking you through the room

@babe I used to be like that in the mid-late 90s, because I was a Mac zealot. And then I became a Linux *and* Mac zealot. And then I accidentally became an OSS maintainer.

Now I'm none of those things.

Over time I've become painfully aware that what works for me ain't for everyone, that nobody really cares about what works for me if it doesn't for them, so now neither do I. Someone wants to use IPX networking, or an ancient version of Solaris on hardware that keeps the house warm? Go for it!

@babe why don't you go back in time and develop entirely different habits like any other time traveler

@ShadowInTheVoid @babe I was recently able to convince a friend to try Linux Cinnamon Mint by basically saying that, after she had about reached a breaking point with Microsoft updates messing with her computer working right, especially after I said that when I first switched to Linux that I kept dual booting for a few weeks and then just stopped booting into Windows and I don’t miss it

@MontgomeryGator @babe That sounds about right.

A problem for FOSS development is a similar hollowing out of the middle: as I recall in the 90s, a lot of software was developed and somewhat supported by universities and government research bodies, with limited but not insignificant resources. Now, FOSS is dominated by the same rapacious corps we complain about all the time, or else by harried volunteers, often in their downtime from working for those corps.

@babe

Some people just want to travel by plane or to use their SUV...

@TheGreatLlama

The point is that it can bettered.
But that can happen only if enough people snap out of magical thinking and sense of entitlement.

@babe

@babe every average https://replyguy.social/ user

@MontgomeryGator @babe Yup, this. A big bunch of years ago when my StinkPad all but quit working, I was persuaded to try Linux. Mandrake, it was. Horrible experience: read the FAQs, find the RPMs, try the things, say the prayers, still be stuck. Post a cogent, succinct request for help in the right sections of the relevant forums, get nothing but "LOL, if that's the kind of question you have to ask, just go back to your Windoze crib, luser" types of replies.

All these years later, I've still not tried Linux again. MacOS is enshittifying out loud, and there's no shortage of smug-forming emissions in the Applesphere, but most stuff still mostly works most of the time, and helpful help is mostly available.