Blogs

Introduction How many times have you had the following happen? A person joins your community and makes a post asking about how to get their WiFi working on Linux. They are new to Linux and they have an .exe file they downloaded somewhere from the internet. Or how about a person who wants to install Linux but can’t choose a distribution and asks for the “best one” or better yet wanting to install “Linux” but not knowing what a distribution is. What explains these kinds of missteps? After all a seasoned user would easily point out the mistakes and know where to get more information. The answer lies in a phenomenon called incognizance. ...

Windows Pros Compatible with most software including games. If it runs it probably runs on Windows. This incudes really old programs and obscure games. Difficult to break, easy to maintain Windows can be broken but it does require doing something stupid and it can be much easier to recover than Linux depending on how you messed up. A broken update can easily be undone sometimes even automatically for example, though newer Linux systems like Fedora Silverblue and NixOS do surpass or rival it in this regard. Windows Cons Difficult installations On Windows it’s not uncommon to have to chew through a few installers to set up the software you need. Inflexible UX On Windows you can’t move your taskbar to the side and you have very limited options for customization. The Spectre of AI integration This won’t be a problem for everyone but the integrity of my information is very important to me. The encroachment of AI and LLMs into windows means I have to be careful when an LLM might be injecting information or digesting my writing for analysis and training Linux Pros Software Availability On linux if software is available you grab it from the software store or maybe the package manager and get going. UX flexibility On linux you can have the UX work however you’d like thanks to GNOME extensions or KDE plasma or the massive collection of Window Managers out there. If you can dream it, there’s a way to do it on linux. The command line Linux allows a lot of flexibility through it’s command line. While windows has this as well, Linux allows you to change or do just about anything through the terminal Linux Cons Installing software not available through the store or your OS’s repos can be a real pain Weird extra package managers, manual compilation, random appimage files and more, things not packaged for your OS can be a real pain to get working. The upside to this is that you can install even the weird stuff and with a little elbow grease you might even get to package it yourself to spare others the pain you went through The 99% rule 99% of your desktop will work really well! However there will always be a few annoying bugs you can’t fix with your hardware or a few features that don’t quite work. It’s annoying and it’s up to every person if it’s worth it compared to Linux’s competitors. Unlimited Footgun Ammunition If you want to do something stupid linux won’t stop you! Especially through the terminal. This can make the learning process quite frustrating.

On Names I have always been a believer in the importance of a name. What we call things reflects how we interact with them. I used this principle when choosing my chosen name, picking something I believed fit my personality and my values. A username however is different. A username is not just a reflection of who you are, but a key part of shaping the way people respond to you online. A username can shape the gender people assign to you, but it can also impart a lot of personality that a first name can not. This is because a username is expected to be creative, whereas a name is meant to simply represent a person. This isn’t to say a username is more important but to say that it has different affordances than a real name. ...

Websites and Social Media In the early days of the internet, years before I would use it at all, it was commonplace to have personal websites. Then I am told came social media sites. They provided an easier way to get your thoughts out into the world. No code, markup, or page design is needed; just write and get directly to sharing. This came with a big boom in popularity for the internet in general as well as these sites in particular; to not use them was to become irrelevant, at least in the eyes of the net. The biggest social media platforms have user counts in the tens and sometimes even hundreds of millions, using their platforms to broadcast their ideas every day. That’s a lot of posts. In fact, according to InternetLiveStats Twitter sees 6,000 tweets a second. There, of course, comes a new problem. I’d call this the modern problem. There is so much of everyone’s thoughts that everything becomes ephemeral; even when posts stay up for long periods, they are functionally “gone,” or better to say irrelevant, within a day. This is unless you have either a large amount of money or insight into a sizeable chunk of the user base. Given that we are presumably possessed by neither our options for cataloging our thoughts despite the best efforts of many are to be irrelevant to the affordances of either social media or those of a website. ...