Which is it? Are you seeing this complaint constantly, or is it a spicy individual opinion?

I’d probably say my preference to have fewer default knee-jerk recommendations for Linux within various tech posts about other systems isn’t particularly unpopular, if only going by the up/downvote count. Even if it was the other way around, I’d stand by it, however antagonistic you might find my “bravery”.

Completely agree, hence the reply to lolcatnip’s comment originally. It’s to be expected I guess, given where we are (as deweydecibel said earlier), but that doesn’t make it less annoying.

Nah mate, you can have this one. This is where I drop off. Jumping into a topic with “you must be ashamed of being a nerd“ is never going to provoke a worthwhile discussion.

Your response is precisely the reaction I referenced by the edit. Why is it personal? “You don’t understand FOSS” “You clearly don’t use Linux” and now, beautifully, “You’re ashamed of being a nerd”.

is your shame of being nerdy so deep that you prefer to try and shame others for not being ashamed?

This response couldn’t be a more perfect example of what I’m saying. Thank you.

Linux absolutely does not exist “outside the market”, that’s absurd. Red Hat, Canonical, SUSE etc aren’t charitable organisations. These major contributors to the Linux kernel aren’t doing so out of love for their fellow man.

For you, yes, Linux is “free” if your measurement of cost is purely financial outlay.

There’s a great back and forth here, and the original thread on Mastodon, which nicely covers both the evangelism (my original issue) and the “cost” of Linux. There’s plenty of reactions in there from people talking about the same things, from both sides of the coin.

FOSS

What’s your barometer, bearing in mind you said it had the potential to be a silver bullet? Silver bullet for what?

I don’t want to sound defensive, but please don’t assume I’m not invested in FOSS. I’m on Lemmy, Mastodon, Pixelfed and am the developer of half a dozen small FOSS projects on GitHub.

I’ve been reading about its potential for a long time. Maybe next year will be the year of Linux ;)

I wouldn’t disagree, and I’m not saying FOSS is inferior, I’m just whinging about the Linux evangelising.

There is no perfect OS that can have universal approval. However if I’d I said “Windows is a data-harvesting nightmare” or “Being locked in to Apple ecosystems is constricting and expensive” then I’m sure I’d see the upvote button hammered on Lemmy. But to seemingly question the validity of Linux as a silver bullet for the vast majority of desktop users is borderline heresy.

You obviously haven’t tried Linux for at least ten years. It’s really not like that.

This is the standard response I’ve heard from Linux advocates for the last 20 years.

I know it’s easy to assume off the back of my initial comment that I might not have, but I assure you, my frustrations with Linux are not borne out of inexperience.

Since when do people need to take into account if anyone else cares when posting to social media? They’re not content creators serving an audience.

I mean, this whole post is about what content is preferable in this specific community.

My bugbear is all the Linux circle-jerking. I get that the fediverse has a high nerd-count (I’m one of them), but the “switch to Linux” sentiment is so tedious. Yes, Linux is great for those that have the time or inclination to learn swathes of new terminologies and procedures just to achieve the same level of productivity that the equivalent commercial data-harvesters offer in a more readily-accessible UX, but the vast majority of users simply don’t care.

This old meme couldn’t be less appropriate on Lemmy.

Edit: Not wanting to poke the bear, but the accusatory phrasing in a couple of the responses below (“you obviously haven’t used Linux in 10 years” and “you don’t really understand the motivation behind FOSS”) go some way towards emphasising the point of this comment.

Same here

In their defence, that is the correct term for this kind of data processing. Legitimate Interest

Agree this is bullshit, but at least there’s a Reject All button which is far more than we probably would have got prior to the introduction of GDPR.

The article is about transitioning from Instagram to Pixelfed, i.e. it’s targeting people who already use Instagram. If an individual is an Instagram user already, then privacy clearly isn’t a consideration for them, and if it was, there are countless articles already regarding Meta’s approach to their data that don’t need to be recycled here.

If your concern is your data, then yes, don’t trust anyone but yourself. As has been said, there’s alternatives for that, including self-hosting.

Pixelfed’s advantages aren’t limited to potential privacy features though, which I agree would have been excellent items to raise in the article, such as a focus on photos and a complete lack of any algorithm forcing tailored content at you. But this is a how-to article, not a feature comparison. I’m sure we’ll see a prevalence of those in the future but it’s still early doors. I would argue that it literally does imply that Pixelfed is more privacy focused though - it’s right there in the title.