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! ✌️
Personally, as a noob myself, I enjoy reading about others’ experiece when they switch. No idea why. Just fun to read usually.
I don’t mind them any more than I mind a bunch of other dumb posts that people feel compelled to share for reasons I don’t understand.
And a lot of them do seem earnest, like they’re showing off a macaroni picture they’re super proud of.
If my adult roommate came home and showed me a macaroni picture they’re super proud of, I probably wouldn’t be personally impressed, but I would be happy for them that they’ve found something they like and are proud of.
Not at all. You seem to think there’s a more appropriate forum for people to join the Linux community, and introduces. Where is that? And how do new Linux users find it? Knowing nothing about Linux distros, where should they ask about distros? Distrowatch catalogs 274 distributions - how do newbies navigate those?
I do think having a “which distro” stickie or sidebar would be handy, but I don’t at all mind the “I ditched Windows” posts. It beats random venting, ranting, and flame wars.
maybe a different structure could work where main linux community is for noobs and we have some kind of seasoned linux community
I find them mildly annoying, but generally tune them out.
The offensive responses, are much worse. Linux users can VERY much be a “boys club” and treat newcomers as lower life forms.
The issue is if you tune them out what’s left? It’s most of the content here.
Hell just the other day there was a “what new tech thing have you done this year?” And 95% of the responses were just some variation of “Installed Mint/PopOS!/Endeavour and started using Firefox.”
Like it’s great that you’re making the transition, but I was hoping to hear what new self hosting service people got working on their home server, some new residential network installs for security platforms, etc.
Not just “I changed browsers.”
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.
Yes.
These posts are the “I voted for peace” decorative lapel button of the '60s and '70s. These posts were the leading edge in the '90s and a little of the '00s.
Now they’re tiresome. It’s like people who’ve come late to the party and want their fanfare; people who came last in the race and proclaim themselves the leaders. The race is over, the banners are down, the spotlight’s off and the newsmedia’s gone home. No need to proclaim victory, nor virtue-signal inclusion in a group that isn’t exclusive.
Yeah. I deleted windows, too.
3+ years ago and I didn’t make a post about it.
It feels like a common and repetitive theme that doesn’t bring much discussion to the table. I might be an old grumpy fart, and I probably would’ve done the same posts back in 1997 when I left Windows NT 4.0 in the rear view mirror.
I’d much prefer to keep the discussion on Linux and not other operating systems. I enjoy AmigaOS and MorphOS as well, but I can’t recall anyone every comparing those to Windows on the forums.
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.
Perhaps we can make a new community here: c/ditchedWindows, for example.
Personally, i would prefer it if the linux 4 noobs community would be brought back to life, or if we have dedicated threads here where we can discuss newbie stuff.
If we would go the route of threads, some helpful people who have a lot of experience could decide to help out and others could just skip the thread.
And if people would want a new community, i would hope that it is not called something like ‘ditched windows’, because that sounds like a recipe to make it a community to complain about windows. For me as newbie, i’m looking for 2 things; info and howto’s and suggestions about everything linux, and the knowledge that there are others who are also new and ask things that would be interesting for me as well.
How about we make a dedicated community for “I deleted Windows” posts?
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.
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.
This is a Linux community, so of course people will be moving away from other operating systems and installing Linux. I don’t see why everyone that does it needs to post about it. It’s like the people that make a big deal about leaving a party instead of just leaving.
It’s annoying. Maybe there should be a separate “SwitchedToLinux” community for these posts.
