this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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TL;DR: I wonder why we always have the same 2 posts as top posts of the day. They appear a bit unnecessary and mildly annoying to me.
Do you think the same? Or do you like them, and can explain me why, so I can change my view?
Please don't just blindly downvote, writing this post took a lot of time. And if you feel the need to do it anyway, tell me why first.


Maybe I am the only person who thinks that.
I probably am, at least according to numbers.

Basically, I've got the feeling that every top post of the day for the last weeks is something like "I've freed myself from evil Windows' shackles and finally switched to Linux.", or "What distro do you recommend?".

Don't get me wrong.
I feel super happy for every newcomer discovering the wonderful world of Linux and FOSS.
I, just like most others here, always try to help them in finding their right distro and guiding them in their first steps.
We all have been there.
And I'm super proud of us all, as a community, that we happily embrace every new member. We definitely have to keep that behaviour, it's what connects us and makes us strong.

I just think we should redirect them a bit onto the specific communities.
Not by banning or censoring, just as friendly reminder, e.g. by a sticky post, comments like "Hey, check out [email protected]" or something else.

It doesn't help much if there are the same threads every day, with people circlejerking on hating Windows and recommending Mint a hundred times, just like 100 people before did on the same thread.

I hate Windows too, but it feels like we're identifying and comparing ourselves with the bitter ex-partner we had a while ago. No, not being Windows shouldn't be the main reason Linux is great.
There are so many great posts and discussions, that are all going missing in this swamp of "Winblows bad, hehe".
We should focus on what makes our software great, and not what the "bad ex-partner" did wrong.

Same with newcomer posts.
I think if the posters get redirected to the correct sub, they will receive more help, since the people partaking in the community are there because they wanna see exactly that.


At the same time, I'm afraid this would undermine our openness and friendliness of this community, and result in being as shitty as Reddits' sub.

!Just as an anecdote, when I was a noob, I posted a question there, and, like 5 minutes later, I got a dozen of non-constructive, offensive comments. 10 minutes later, my post got removed. This was my first contact to the Linux world btw. Guess who switched back to Windows for another half year because of that?
We have to prevent this at any costs.
Anyway... !<


I really enjoy this community here and wanna keep it this great.
I just wanted to ask you, what you think about those everyday-top-posts.
If you like them, please try to change my mind and explain me why :)


Edit/ Additional stuff/ Learnings:

  • I don't hate those "I switched to Linux"-posts, just to clarify. They're fine for me, they just feel like white noise. But I've read many times in this thread that a lot of people enjoy those posts. If that's the case, I'm totally fine! :)
  • I think putting those posts in a weekly sticky thread could be worth an idea? Then everyone could describe their experience of this week of switching from one distro to another, e.g. "My first week of Gentoo" or something like this. Would be an interesting read for everyone.
  • I also believe those "Fuck Windows"-posts can be kind of therapeutic for some people, since Windows became really shitty and annoying in the last years. And when you feel the relieve from finally getting rid of it, you tell that everyone. Understandable.
  • Splitting the community isn't the best idea too. We can always learn from each other and I like the diversity of this community.
  • Thank you for your kind and constructive answers! ✌️
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

They are top posts for a reason. It's because people enjoy them. Everyone has the choice to ignore them.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

maybe a different structure could work where main linux community is for noobs and we have some kind of seasoned linux community

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Can't have linux without a hint of elitism.

"Im much better than all my other friends who are still using Windows ... yuck"

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Eh, elitism seems to float around all tech communities. PCMasterRace, C, CLI, Apple, Tesla/cars, Snap-On, heck even bidets have elitist advocates. Any time there are multiple way to do something, someone will be snooty about it.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Nah it's cool.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

oh yeah, it's been annoying me, too. I haven't subscribed to read countless blog posts of people who set off on the exceptionally unique journey of installing Ubuntu and liking it more than Windows.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I really don't get why anyone would be annoyed about this specifically when recurring topics and posts are just pretty common.. about litterally anything. I find it even more weird since it's about people ditching windows (I mean how many topics and posts hating on windows, praising Linux, suggesting Linux, and whatever else...just lots and lots, and somehow people are fine with that, so why would it be any different here ?)

Beside, people just want to share things, regardless if others did exactly the same an hour or a decade ago. Why care when it's just so easy to move on to something you'd be more interested in ?

One thing I do find tiresome more than anything within the Linux community though is talks about noobs like they are some cringe childs being boring and acting childishly...everyone have been noobs seriously, even you mentioned toxicity and the lack of openness/friendliness towards noobs if we ostracized them..yet you are suggesting it anyway. I get noobs aren't always fun but come on ! And about newcommer posts...noobs will seek help wherever they can seek it, having another place to help them is not going to change that, so we might just as well help them and redirect them to helping sites anyway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think you misunderstood my post.
I don't have anything against newcomers - quite the opposite. I try help them a lot and support them as much as I possibly can, since I got the same help a few years ago.

The only thing I criticize is the lack of organisation. There's a huge flood of those two types of posts, and other content just drowns in them.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

I don't mind them. If this type of social media had existed when I first installed Linux 24 years ago, I would have probably done the same thing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don't mind. I understand the enthusiasm since i switched recently (again) too.

As for windows; i think one of the main reasons people switch has to do with how bad windows has become. It's bloated, it feels like everything is spied on, and in 11 they add AI and not to be helpful to their customers. So, a lot of people will say: hey, i switched to linux and finally, i'm rid of that evil windows. Many people might not know that much about linux just yet, so they are maybe - i'm speculating here - moving away from something unpleasant, rather than switching to linux because of the many advantages.

As for the linux 4 noobs community, i joined but it feels pretty dead and so, i ask my noob questions (apart from trying to do my own research) here, rather than over there. Are you implying that noobs are not really welcome to ask their questions here? It would be fine with me if the noob community was filled with people who are enthusiastically asking questions, but the most recent posts are a month old, so not very inviting.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

I like reading about these experiences and helping people along if I can, each one is different.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Positivity is good. I would rather see 100 positive posts than one negative one, even if there's a lot of redundancy. It helps encourage others to switch to Linux, which is good.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There's a huge middle ground between constant reposts about the same topic and hostility to new users. Megathreads have often been the solution to that particular problem. I don't know if Lemmy has a merge functionality, though. It seems like the mod tools are kind of limited.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (5 children)

I think explaining why you think so would be better than just saying "No" and not elaborating further.

Could you maybe please tell me your stance on that in more detail, in case nobody else already explained it better?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Perhaps a pinned, weekly post? It's not like federated sites have enough traction yet to make a weekly thread full of buried posts, so it should work in the meantime

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's not only you. I suppose we need a separate community, linux-newbie or something like this, for such posts and questions about choosing a distro.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I like to hear other peoples experiences

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

For me I'd rather people post something over nothing even if it's the same post to us it's clearly something the poster felt was important to them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Maybe it bothers you more because your Lemmy feed is not as well populated with interesting posts as you would hope?

I do wish people would check the post history here before asking "what distro should I use." Or search the web for "how to pick a Linux distro in 2024" there are no shortage of those, although to be fair to them, you are a lot more likely nowadays to find nothing but AI-generated bullshit.

Like this commenter here mentions, there are pinned posts saying "share the story of how you met your distro." I would love it if moderators could take posts and turn them into comments on pinned posts like "share. But we don't have that as far as I know, so what can you do but contribute a patch to the Lemmy software maintainers, or else just deal with the noise.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

It's nice to get some idea of how many people are switching over, it seems to have had an uptick recently, 3 people I know in real life have tried using Linux as their daily driver in the past few months who hadn't previously

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Maybe we can just fire up a new community specifically for that - /c/linuxevangelists or /c/linuxplunge /c/linuxswitch or something conceptually similar, and then direct posts of that nature to that community.

Don’t get me wrong, I like seeing more people get into it, but I’ve always thought of /c/linux and adjacent/similar communities as community technical support, so I just tend to ignore or hide “wooo I switched to linux” posts.

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