The freedom and control and depth and enjoyment in using Linux. I know, I know, shut up I’m answering the question.
There was a question here recently about partitioning, and that got me thinking about inodes and really wanting to understand how data storage works. I went on a deep dive and learnt so much. I feel like I have a real deep understanding of how my system works now.
People don’t understand how wonderful it is to have mastery over things. Most people are just consumers of a thing. I do my own motorbike and car maintenance, and I know where my limits are in terms of skill and equipment. It’s so satisfying, it brings a sense of joy and accomplishment to my life.
I’m baffled that people just… don’t do this kind of thing. Don’t learn about metabolic pathways or companion planting or do careful research and just impulse buy… Like… Life must suck for them. It must be so dam boring to live life like that.
So yeah, I don’t think many people understand that.
I completely agree. And I’ve thought about this before. I can’t know what is going on in people’s heads but a lot of people just… don’t care. They have fun watching TV and playing popular video games. I think a large portion of people just don’t like learning things. Like it just annoys them. That’s what I’ve been led to believe. Which also makes it hard to get people into something I’m into. They’ll see I’m massively excited about something and the thing I’m into looks cool, so they’ll ask about it. Then whatever it is, be it some tech thing, a niche game, enthusiast grade flashlights, literally anything, turns out to require learning something, they just get turned off of it immediately. If someone wants to get into something I’m doing, I’ve started prefacing it with “this is not straight forward, are you okay with a bit of learning?” to avoid the disappointment and wasting their time. Usually the answer is no.
I’m not saying that about all video games, I was trying to say that people who don’t like learning tend to gravitate towards whatever video games are popular at the time and don’t necessarily form complex opinions about different types of games or their tastes. Anything below surface level enjoyment that would require learning would be too much. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There’s nothing wrong with just loading up whatever new call of duty or fifa or something and just relaxing.
I guess I didn’t elaborate enough on that, I just said “popular video game” which didn’t get my meaning across. In short, I was saying those people also don’t put a lot of thought or effort into what entertainment they consume because whatever is easiest and most popular is good enough, because they don’t care to dive into learning about anything else.
I’m also not saying these games don’t have complicated and high skill ceilings. Most do.
I absolutely agree with you. Just yesterday evening, a friend asked me for help with his laptop. He was going to throw it away because the Bluetooth broke and he couldn’t use his favorite mouse.
Start, Settings, Bluetooth, turn on. There, I just saved you six hundred bucks.
It takes time and effort though, and usually that time and effort is spent elsewhere, especially if you’re an adult with two jobs and two kids. When you don’t have to think to better your mastery of your surroundings, making good hardware/software choices becomes increasingly disparate
I’m the kinda guy who’s aware of how cool Linux and system mastery can be, but also the kinda guy who’s too lazy to care enough about maintaining a dual boot Linux/Windows system so every other year I’ll install a new Linux distro I haven’t used before only to do nothing with it and delete that partition of my hard drive within a month.
I am in 100% agreement with you. I’m kind of in the same mindset in figuring out my homelab setup. Still learning docker and how volumes work 😢 haha
I’m in academia but I like to tinker with tech. So when my students or co-workers are surprised that I know so much about tech and how to navigate around most computer systems and troubleshoot (Mac/Windows/Linux) they are perplexed. They ask why I didn’t major in tech. I tell them that I majored in what I loved (history) and play with tech as a hobby to relax.
It’s why I selfhost my own Lemmy server. Gives me something to do with my hobby, keeps me focused on what’s new in tech, makes me learn to keep up with docker, Linux, editing CRON tabs etc.
Hey, I’m going through the same thing! I just got all my hardware in for my new server and I’m learning docker stuff right now. When do some difficult troubleshooting I’ll think of the random lemming I passed in the night that is doing something similar.
People don’t understand how wonderful it is to have mastery over things.
I have so many areas of my life that I think in terms of a skill, one of which is Linux, which I’m using now. Another is coffee/espresso, cycling, writing, etc.
Basically all hobbies. But the point is that I can develop mastery at my own pace in so many different areas. Sometimes, it’s slow and methodical, like coffee: I’ll try something new maybe every weeks. And sometimes it’s breakneck speed, like Linux…just do a deep dive and come out knowing a bunch of new stuff.
Eh, time and effort is limited depending on what the matter at hand is. Sometimes, you are required to just impulse buy or not live at all.
… And yet, I know exactly what you mean. There’s a class of people who just live with a phone for nearly everything they do 14 hours of their daily life, day in day out, 12 months a year. No rest whatsoever. And yet, the moment they find any resistance anywhere in their life, not even on something related to the phone, they just. dont. google. They literally refuse to help themselves and will just do what they know and refuse to do or even concern themselves with better.
I’ve seen a 20-year-old who, when asked to give in their homework on Moodle, like normal people do, instead… wrote everything on a Mac’s Notes app, took a photo and then pestered people for the teacher’s phone number so they could send the shitty photo of their homework on a very popular chat application. When told that this was not going to count, they just shrugged and stopped caring. Again, they used technology daily. That was objectively the stupidest and laziest “functional” person I’ve ever met, a true sheep, and I fear ever becoming like them during onset of dementia.
Maybe not nobody but most…
The freedom and control and depth and enjoyment in using Linux. I know, I know, shut up I’m answering the question.
There was a question here recently about partitioning, and that got me thinking about inodes and really wanting to understand how data storage works. I went on a deep dive and learnt so much. I feel like I have a real deep understanding of how my system works now.
People don’t understand how wonderful it is to have mastery over things. Most people are just consumers of a thing. I do my own motorbike and car maintenance, and I know where my limits are in terms of skill and equipment. It’s so satisfying, it brings a sense of joy and accomplishment to my life.
I’m baffled that people just… don’t do this kind of thing. Don’t learn about metabolic pathways or companion planting or do careful research and just impulse buy… Like… Life must suck for them. It must be so dam boring to live life like that.
So yeah, I don’t think many people understand that.
I completely agree. And I’ve thought about this before. I can’t know what is going on in people’s heads but a lot of people just… don’t care. They have fun watching TV and playing popular video games. I think a large portion of people just don’t like learning things. Like it just annoys them. That’s what I’ve been led to believe. Which also makes it hard to get people into something I’m into. They’ll see I’m massively excited about something and the thing I’m into looks cool, so they’ll ask about it. Then whatever it is, be it some tech thing, a niche game, enthusiast grade flashlights, literally anything, turns out to require learning something, they just get turned off of it immediately. If someone wants to get into something I’m doing, I’ve started prefacing it with “this is not straight forward, are you okay with a bit of learning?” to avoid the disappointment and wasting their time. Usually the answer is no.
I think you hit the nail on the head there. Most people must not like learning.
You’re implying that learning how to do well at a video game involves no mastery or learning. I don’t think that’s accurate for all games.
I’m not saying that about all video games, I was trying to say that people who don’t like learning tend to gravitate towards whatever video games are popular at the time and don’t necessarily form complex opinions about different types of games or their tastes. Anything below surface level enjoyment that would require learning would be too much. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There’s nothing wrong with just loading up whatever new call of duty or fifa or something and just relaxing.
I guess I didn’t elaborate enough on that, I just said “popular video game” which didn’t get my meaning across. In short, I was saying those people also don’t put a lot of thought or effort into what entertainment they consume because whatever is easiest and most popular is good enough, because they don’t care to dive into learning about anything else.
I’m also not saying these games don’t have complicated and high skill ceilings. Most do.
Ah that makes more sense. Well said then.
I absolutely agree with you. Just yesterday evening, a friend asked me for help with his laptop. He was going to throw it away because the Bluetooth broke and he couldn’t use his favorite mouse.
Start, Settings, Bluetooth, turn on. There, I just saved you six hundred bucks.
It takes time and effort though, and usually that time and effort is spent elsewhere, especially if you’re an adult with two jobs and two kids. When you don’t have to think to better your mastery of your surroundings, making good hardware/software choices becomes increasingly disparate
I’m the kinda guy who’s aware of how cool Linux and system mastery can be, but also the kinda guy who’s too lazy to care enough about maintaining a dual boot Linux/Windows system so every other year I’ll install a new Linux distro I haven’t used before only to do nothing with it and delete that partition of my hard drive within a month.
Last week I installed Ubuntu!
I am in 100% agreement with you. I’m kind of in the same mindset in figuring out my homelab setup. Still learning docker and how volumes work 😢 haha
I’m in academia but I like to tinker with tech. So when my students or co-workers are surprised that I know so much about tech and how to navigate around most computer systems and troubleshoot (Mac/Windows/Linux) they are perplexed. They ask why I didn’t major in tech. I tell them that I majored in what I loved (history) and play with tech as a hobby to relax.
It’s why I selfhost my own Lemmy server. Gives me something to do with my hobby, keeps me focused on what’s new in tech, makes me learn to keep up with docker, Linux, editing CRON tabs etc.
Hey, I’m going through the same thing! I just got all my hardware in for my new server and I’m learning docker stuff right now. When do some difficult troubleshooting I’ll think of the random lemming I passed in the night that is doing something similar.
I have so many areas of my life that I think in terms of a skill, one of which is Linux, which I’m using now. Another is coffee/espresso, cycling, writing, etc.
Basically all hobbies. But the point is that I can develop mastery at my own pace in so many different areas. Sometimes, it’s slow and methodical, like coffee: I’ll try something new maybe every weeks. And sometimes it’s breakneck speed, like Linux…just do a deep dive and come out knowing a bunch of new stuff.
I fucking love being alive.
For me, it’s homebrewing. I think this can keep my interest long enough to get through winter depression. That’s good enough.
Eh, time and effort is limited depending on what the matter at hand is. Sometimes, you are required to just impulse buy or not live at all.
… And yet, I know exactly what you mean. There’s a class of people who just live with a phone for nearly everything they do 14 hours of their daily life, day in day out, 12 months a year. No rest whatsoever. And yet, the moment they find any resistance anywhere in their life, not even on something related to the phone, they just. dont. google. They literally refuse to help themselves and will just do what they know and refuse to do or even concern themselves with better.
I’ve seen a 20-year-old who, when asked to give in their homework on Moodle, like normal people do, instead… wrote everything on a Mac’s Notes app, took a photo and then pestered people for the teacher’s phone number so they could send the shitty photo of their homework on a very popular chat application. When told that this was not going to count, they just shrugged and stopped caring. Again, they used technology daily. That was objectively the stupidest and laziest “functional” person I’ve ever met, a true sheep, and I fear ever becoming like them during onset of dementia.
Yeah. My appreciation for Linux has recently grown a lot. It just seems like the Web and tech companies really are going to shit.
I’m old enough that being free from ads and spying is far more important to me then anything windows can offer.