I haven’t seen how Lemmy responds to troubleshooting requests about Linux. But I remember some Linux Reddit communities being full of vitriol of like “don’t use things you don’t understand” or like “distro? version? Hardware specs? Logs? Did you even search?” Which I believe led to people just starting out uncomfortable with asking for help there
I think the answer is pretty complex and gets into why online communities in general become hostile, not just Reddit.
First off, there are incredible amounts of money and effort being spent to make people feel tribal and hate each other. Destabilization happens by convincing people that those next to them are at fault for their woes, and ensuring they don’t look up at the strings being pulled.
Second, those who generally aren’t hostile naturally don’t gravitate to places that are, so the gravity of hostility increases by hostile people being there and echoing hostility to those they perceive to be being hostile to them, even if the sentiment is “be less hostile.” It’s baked into meme culture. “Touch grass” is genuinely like “hey go outside, take a breath” at its core, but is now an insult or hostility that gets a reaction of further hostility.
Third, the world is really fucking shitty in ways outside of most people’s control. You can vote, martyr, donate, but generally the world has gotten to a close point to 100s of sci fi stories we’ve written warn us about, and so some people are just doing what the money in item one is spending, the conditioning works. Feels warm to hate someone. But then for those on the opposite they want to hate what they consider stupid.
That being said, people are genuinely shitty often, and it’s foolish to pretend that’s not the case. Open source has often been full of pettiness and bickering. Many a GitHub threads are just arguing about someone who wants a feature and is mad at volunteer developers for not delivering it. I could go on a tirade but I’ll end there
That could be considered (relative) dead, given how many Windows users exist compared to Linux. In more serious note, I just think that Lemmy attracts more Linux users than Windows. That’s all to it.
I think it’s not that active, right?
last post 3 days ago(as of feb,28,2026)
i find quite ironic that it’s full of troublshooting, while linux comms are primarily full of entertainment. “Windows just works out of the box” btw
3/4 posts surrounding this one were asking for help with Linux.
Also the linux community on lemmy is big enough go have its own dedicated help/support communities.
I haven’t seen how Lemmy responds to troubleshooting requests about Linux. But I remember some Linux Reddit communities being full of vitriol of like “don’t use things you don’t understand” or like “distro? version? Hardware specs? Logs? Did you even search?” Which I believe led to people just starting out uncomfortable with asking for help there
All perfectly reasonable responses to bad questions that waste people’s time tbf.
Why are so many reddit subs so hostile? It isn’t just a problem with their Linux forums; it’s the entire site.
I think the answer is pretty complex and gets into why online communities in general become hostile, not just Reddit.
First off, there are incredible amounts of money and effort being spent to make people feel tribal and hate each other. Destabilization happens by convincing people that those next to them are at fault for their woes, and ensuring they don’t look up at the strings being pulled.
Second, those who generally aren’t hostile naturally don’t gravitate to places that are, so the gravity of hostility increases by hostile people being there and echoing hostility to those they perceive to be being hostile to them, even if the sentiment is “be less hostile.” It’s baked into meme culture. “Touch grass” is genuinely like “hey go outside, take a breath” at its core, but is now an insult or hostility that gets a reaction of further hostility.
Third, the world is really fucking shitty in ways outside of most people’s control. You can vote, martyr, donate, but generally the world has gotten to a close point to 100s of sci fi stories we’ve written warn us about, and so some people are just doing what the money in item one is spending, the conditioning works. Feels warm to hate someone. But then for those on the opposite they want to hate what they consider stupid.
That being said, people are genuinely shitty often, and it’s foolish to pretend that’s not the case. Open source has often been full of pettiness and bickering. Many a GitHub threads are just arguing about someone who wants a feature and is mad at volunteer developers for not delivering it. I could go on a tirade but I’ll end there
That could be considered (relative) dead, given how many Windows users exist compared to Linux. In more serious note, I just think that Lemmy attracts more Linux users than Windows. That’s all to it.
By the same token, Mastodon has a lot more posts about Linux than Windows.