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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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I used to like LTT up until their "Linux Challenge" videos which were just a pain to watch. Shit like this coming from the biggest tech channel on youtube just drives me up the wall.
After this happened, GitHub added a Download button to their for preview pages. So they themselves considered it was enough of a problem/inconvenience to not have a download button.
ohh boy, I almost forgot about that. That was super painful. It's a website linus, not a file browser.
That bit made me cringe. You go to the file, and can download using the Raw button or using wget. It’s not hard, it’s ignorance.
It also has nothing to do with Linux and everything to do with how Github works. I actually give him a pass on nuking X while installing Steam, that shouldn't happen(although he did get a nice big warning, but that warning was far from user friendly). But some of the other stuff they ran into was "This doesn't work exactly like windows, therefore is bad." type stuff.
In that video he did everything that everyone recommends not to do when trying out Linux:
He is stupid, he paid the stupid tax. Linux didn't do any of the things that went wrong in that video, it was his own stubbornness and ignorance.
the problem with a lot of these recommendations though is that to a non-linux user: all code is random, and no commands are understood. you only learn by doing, and if you cant do until you know, you'll never get anywhere. you gotta make a few mistakes to learn anything, and thats what happened. yea he paid the stupid tax, but so does everyone else while they learn a new thing. that was the entire point of the challenge: how hard is it? and it turns out, quite! info is scattered, theres lots of commands and code that sounds like it'll do what you want but is actually a bad idea (as evidenced by the recommendations you point out), and things can break easily. thats the video.
Yeah, it's not like people can read and there are several tutorials and manuals freely available all over the internet.
to a new person, those tutorials and manuals are the "random code and unknown commands" that i spoke about in the above comment. i thought i made that very clear. nothing is known until it is learned, and things cannot be learned without practice. practice leads to initial failure, and the frustrations with that are what the linux challenge was about.
No one has never learned anything from reading? So, history must be a con from big paper to sell books, huh?
Seems like you are purposefully misunderstanding Cora's replies, so you... can be snide? win an argument? You never mentioned you understand the reasoning Cora is using.
I understand their argument. I think it's stupid. So I'm mocking the argument to bring that point home. Reading about things, gives us understanding of said things. At least as approximate as possible as to not need to break anything when practicing with it. Breaking X or the desktop environment is not a common experience. It happens but its not frequent. Windows encourages people to turn off their brain and not to understand the basics of how their os works. That mindset leads to unsafe behaviors that are simply mitigated by reading what the os is asking you. There are literal first principles tutorials that explains all concepts, YouTube videos, Wikipedia explains it all in simple English. A 15 minutes google trip gives all that's necessary to safely run Linux. Most everything else is just like any other os.
You don't have to crash into a tree first to learn how to drive. It can be explained to you in a way that practice is safe and accident free. You don't have to kill a bunch of people to learn medicine, you're taught in class and out of books until you're safe enough to practice along with a mentor without killing anyone out of negligence. Learning a new os or software is no different. Just read the manual you dense smug bugs.
Learning a new OS is very different from learning to drive or medicine - for one you wont kill anyone by messing up. So the bar to entry should be far lower. Things should just work and be safe by default. You should not need to read through manuals to get basic things to work in Linux. It is very nice that you can if you want to really take advantage of what it has to offer - but it should not be a requirement to using it at a basic level.
If you force everyone to learn how to use Linux before they can use it then why would most people even bother with it at all? Linux distros have gotten way better at not requiring lots of knowledge before you can use it over the years. To a point where you only need to learn a few differences, but why stop trying to make things even easier to use and lower the bar so more people can use it? Why does Linux need to be some elitist OS that only those that are willing to read through manuals can use? Some distros can target those people, while others can target people who just want to use their systems for actual work/play.
They are.
You don't.
It isn't.
Do you have brain damage?
I'm not saying to read through the whole manual. It's an expression from the world of tech development. Most mistakes by omission are the result of a person, usually a careless dev or a mindnumbed user, failing to read something that is directly in front of their eyes. Just turn your brain on. You can literally learn Linux by reading or watching like, a 10 minute video on YouTube. It will take you longer to download it and install it in your computer. You can watch in your phone while the ISO downloads.
How would someone who doesn't use GitHub or linux know how to do that?
GitHub shouldn't be a method of software distribution, but a lot of FOSS devs take the easy way out. Understandably so; they're volunteering their time. Still, Linus is in a position to show how it works rather than complaining.
And to prove the point there was a website dedicated to taking GitHub links and turning them into download links.
I know Linus is more of a hardware guy but c'mon. You learn git freshman year into any Computer Science-related degree. Failing that, 5 seconds of Google or ChatGPT even will set you straight. Maybe it wasn't intuitive, but I like think the biggest tech youtuber would have knowledge of something so fundamental to his field...
As I recall he was trying to use Linux as if he was a regular non-techy person. So it could make sense for him to do that knowing it's wrong. (Which wouldn't apply to "apt install Steam" yes do as I say issue, which a regular user probably wouldn't have tried and ignored the warning even with jargon there).
I don't find it completly unbelievable even a techy could make that mistake because they do not use version control software like git.
I really don't think he was acting or anything. Like someone else said, if he knew how it worked he could have used it as a moment to teach others right? Instead he just completely fumbled everything, said it was set up incorrectly and blamed the website for it. Which given recent events is such a Linus thing to do...
I thought he made it explicit going into the Linux challenge but it's not stated clearly as such in the first ep (Linux Hates Me - Daily Driver Challenge Pt.1).
In the video Linus says:
Why would a regular non-techy person need to run GoXLR on Linux
Audio creation is a hidden magic I know little of, so the same reasons as on Windows but they're sick of Windows? Do you consider an audio enthusiastic a "techy"? Perhaps I should have said "computer techy".
I absolutely consider an audio enthusiast a "techy", and anyone looking to use GoXLR is definitely a "techy". Anyone who's found themselves on the GoXLR on Linux GitHub page and hasn't immediately closed the tab is almost certainly going to be knowledgeable* enough to navigate a git repository, or at least be willing to put in more effort than downloading a single file from the repository then giving up when it doesn't work.
You could be right, I don't know enough about audio generally or the audience for an GoXLR.
I loved watching him type out "yes I understand the thing that I'm about to do is going to break my computer" and then complain that the thing that he did broke his computer!