@lettosprey @bluestarultor
I am not blaming Linux users for not being helpful enough.
I am blaming certain Linux users for being actively unhelpful.
There's a very, very big difference.

The people it harms the most are actually people who've just switched to Linux, making it way harder for them to keep using Linux.

To put it another way, the problem is active, condescending gatekeeping; pushing away new people because they aren't good enough.
I see no way that behavior can ever be justified in the context of someone asking for help with Linux.

:blobcatbusiness: What's the most common complaint I've heard about Linux?

Not the installation process.
Not finding a distro.
Not getting programs to work.
Not troubleshooting.
Not hardware compatibility.

The most common complaint about Linux I've seen is this:
For a normal computer user, asking for help is just about impossible.

They ask a simple question and:
People respond "Did you Google it?"
People complain that the question wasn't asked "correctly".
People respond "RTFM"
People get mad??? at them for making an easy mistake.

We can't expect normal people to know to, or even know how to deal with any of that stuff.

Search engines these days are awful, manuals are hard to read for most people (especially stuff like ArchWiki), and normal people make mistakes we think are easily avoidable.

The solution to making Linux more popular is not ruthless promotion. The solution is to actually help the people who are trying to use it. :ablobcatattention:

#Linux

It will only be "the year of the Linux desktop" when people can use it without knowing what Linux is. :ablobcatbongo:

@harrysentonbury
Mr Information

@qurlyjoe
Full flight simulator

:blobcatbusiness: Why aren't LLM programing workflows measurably faster when we're trying to build something well?

Programming with LLMs switches the bottleneck from development to planning, but, when building something well, planning has always been the bottleneck. :blobcatreading:

Additionally, in normal development we're forced to take time and think over what we're making as we build it. We figure out what we want in the process of programming each small feature.

In LLM-'assisted' development we don't really have a chance think over what we're making because we're not building it. We figure out what we want through seeing the end result and repeatedly 'fixing' it.

:blobballfetch: It's like the difference between going to the basement, looking through your tools, grabbing a sledgehammer and using that to smash through a wall vs. swinging various hammer-shaped objects at the wall until you get something that works.

It's up in the air as to which will be faster, but I'd personally rather use the tool I know will work within a few swings.

#Development #Programming

I've been using my phone with animations disabled in the accessibility settings and everything is just so fast and snappy.

I love it! :ablobcatheartsqueeze:

Note: This is on Android; iOS's "Reduce Motion" setting doesn't disable most animations, it just replaces them with crossfades.

:blobballfetch: Just realized how good it would be to have an Android-like 'Bedtime Mode" on my desktop to tell me to "Go to bed!" by making my computer go completely grayscale.

Sad to see that KDE doesn't have the option, and Gnome requires an extension for the functionality. :blobcatnotlikethis:

KDE Feature Request: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=474826
Gnome Extension: https://www.omglinux.com/gnome-bedtime-extension-greyscale-mode/

FOSS developers, hard at work saying "no excuses."
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/01/adobe-creative-cloud-linux-wine-patches

Mozilla Foundation:
"Make good tech the norm"
"Make good things together"
"Make good ideas matter""

Uhhh... WHAT?
You haven't done any of that in YEARS 💀

#Firefox #Mozilla

re: Mozilla survey ( https://mozillafoundation.tfaforms.net/201 )

I'm tired of Mozilla acting like every other "irresponsible tech corporation." Hold yourselves accountable, stop with the AI distraction, and fix what's actually broken.

I want a vanilla Firefox experience good enough that I don't have to use a fork instead, but every day I hear some news about how it's actively getting worse. I'm sick of it.

#Mozilla #Firefox

@RueNahcMohr
Looks like https://www.printables.com/model/981111-dummy-13-version-10

If it's a bubble, why is it still growing?

- Some investor; during a bubble