In simplified terms:

You are allowed to modify stuff but it is not actually changing the install as is.

This is achieved by different techniques like file system overlays, containerisation, btrfs snapshots and so on.

The idea is to replicate the classical behavior you know from embedded devices that have their core functionality in ROM with even firmware updates only overlayed or modern smartphones: You can modify your system but in the end there’s always the possibilty to “reset to factory settings” as in: the last known working configuration.

This is just a theory but maybe worth a thought:

Could it be possible that acceptance in a certain community up to the point where it’s just a non-issue that is totally separated from what the community does, bring a lot of people to the public view that exist everywhere else, too, just not that openly?

There was in fact some minor friction on IT events some years ago where people objected to stuff partly looking more like a pride event. Yet the majority didn’t care and there was barely any active pushback. And so it normalised very quickly and now it is just how it is. In my personal view at least for the benefit of all involved.

You are obviously not doing enough work with a full screen terminal being open… 😜

Compatibilty of Windows games in Linux have gone a long way, partly but also independently from Steam’s work on it.

In fact Linux nowadays supports more Windows games than Windows, as especially older games still work there but not on modern Windows anymore.

I will not pretend that there aren’t games with issues, but in the vast majority of cases that’s new games and for the simple reason that some publishers actively go out their way to prevent them from working on Linux (highlights being anti-cheat tech that Linux worked hard to make it compatible, yet with certain publishers intentionally not setting a simple flag needed to run, often with totally made-up “reasons” about Linux’ insecurity…).

But at that point pihole is just a fancy web interface with some nice looking but for most purposes useless graphs. I just let Unbound filter stuff with the same filter lists pihole would use.

Yet sometimes the only reasonable guess is that they coded in undocumented brainfuck.

A lot of companies stuff also runs on linux when it’s not free, just so they can avoid having to manage the hardware side… see: Google Cloud, AWS, Azure etc.

The amount of companies having their whole infrastructure run by one of the big cloud services on linux servers nowadays is far too high to make a serious argument of “linux is only secure because it’s irrelevant and no one cares to break it”.

there is hardly any point of creating malware for a system with such a small user base

Actually the whole world runs on linux, Windows is mostly the low level consumer end.

Which makes your argument true for a certain segment of malware (the cheap low tech stuff more akin to scams etc targeting people en mass but expected to have a low return), but not actually for the parts where the money is that justify elaborate malware and hacks.

Sure…an open source OS is worse than a closed one. Because you are too lazy to check the former, yet trust the latter ignoring all its well documented cases of spying on users…

Maybe you should try to go back to basic logic over idiological tribalism before you question other people’s perspective.

Most normal people are nervous interacting with a GUI pop-up that gives them two options

Sadly no. They should be nervous if it’s about making changes to their system. In reality however Windows conditioned them to just click the button labeled “Yes” or “Okay” without even reading the pop-up in the first place.

So because you project your habit of creating a million unnecessary accounts onto other people requiring an account for Windows isn’t bad somehow?

PS: Android works without one btw… for those who actually use stock android anyway.

PPS: Also do you seriously believe there aren’t 1 Million other reasons by Windows is bullshit?

In my experience the fuck ups on the level where you need technical help are more in line with a “just freshly reinstall Windows yet another time”-scenario

But a huge part is conditioning because people are forced to use Windows early and get used to it.

I have made the exact same “oh, this just works and is quite intuitive and convenient”-experience with Linux installs… for people lacking that prior forced contact with Windows (say older relatives with their first PC for example…).

The wiki is actually good for beginners, too. As you are often forced to reallylly read through subpages and cross-referenced topics until you somewhat understand why you are doing something instead of just how. Doesn’t make it easy ofc but a beginner can totally handle the wiki, it just takes more time.

That’s a build-in sudo feature, set by Defaults insults in your sudoers file.

Don’t we all know that guy, who is rather stupid and useless but at least has proper standards?

You could…

But then one is an open system where you can disable the UI put on top and have a working linux system, while the other is a closed blob destroying compatibility and trying hard to lock you out from accessing the underlying linux system.

Linux is Linux.

We should send all those people, pages and guides suggesting distros to hell.

And then instead we suggest update-schemes (fixed, rolling, slow-roll), package managers and Desktop environments. People with enough brain cells to start a computer are then absolutely able to chose a distro fitting them based on that. Everything else coming with a distro is just themeing/branding anyway…

(and just for the use statistic: Archlinux, Opensuse (Leap and Kalpa), Debian here…)

I’ve been using Arch and Manjaro for couple years each and in my experience they both break regularly. But, for some weird reason, Arch Linux is praised, when Manjaro is shamed upon.

No, there is not some weird reason but actual very good ones.

Things can break on a bleeding edge update scheme. That’s to be expected from time to time. But the questions are “why did it break” and “what is done to fix it”.

If something breaks on Archlinux it’s because of some new package with a issue that escaped testing. Then the fix come out as fast as possible (often within minutes even, but let’s assume hours as those things need to move through mirrors first…).

If something breaks on Manjaro it’s either because of the exact same reason as above, but 2 weeks later. Because Manjaro keeps back updates for two weeks “for stability reasons”, yet doesn’t do anything in those 2 weeks. So they just add the same problem later, completely defeating the argumant about stability. Oh, and fixes are of course kept back for 2 weeks, too, because… reasons.

Or it breaks because they fucked up their internal QA. For example by letting their certificates expire again and again and again and again… of by screwing up their very own pacman-wrapper and then ddos’ing the AUR for all users, not only Manjaro ones.

Or -speaking about the AUR- it breaks because they give their users full access to the Arch User Repository (without any warnings about user content being less reliable and used at your own risk) pre-installed. Also they do it on a system generally out-of-date because it lags 2 weeks behind. Which is not what AUR packages are build for (they assume up-to-date systems) and is a straight path to dependency hell and breakings… not because something went wrong but because the whole concept of an out-of-date system not running their own also 2-weeks behind version onf the AUR is idiotic. On the “plus” side they have an easy fix: blame the user, because he should obviously know that an pre-installed part of Manjaro is conceptionally flawed and shouldn’t be trusted.