• etrotta@programming.devEnglish
    342·
    5 months ago

    I feel like this misses the point of why people say Linux is for programmers pretty hard. It is not really about writing code, just about being tech-savvy and properly knowing your way around computers, which OP may as well know better than a lot of programmers.

    Cherry-picking a lot, but I cannot imagine saying this to a normal biased person would make them any more likely to consider Linux:

    I am not a programmer, but I studied computer science in college

    For the past eight years, I’ve been a tech writer

    Sure, being tech-savvy helps—which, by the way, is equally valid for Windows and macOS—but it’s not necessary. Linux doesn’t demand technical aptitude or computer science knowledge for normal day-to-day use cases.

    It is important to recognize it still demands a lot more technical aptitude to find and understand information about how it works, how to it set up and how to customize compared to Windows or Mac, which come preinstalled and hold your hand through the setup process.

    It isn’t anything out of this world, but does require more effort than proprietary commercial software and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. Great article besides that though, and this wouldn’t really be an issue if it weren’t for that being the headline.

    • Zangoose@lemmy.world
      6·
      5 months ago

      To be fair, studying computer science isn’t always indicative of knowing your way around tech anymore. I’m an undergrad in CS right now with some experience as a TA. The amount of people who got points off of submissions (for a 2nd year class) because they didn’t know how to zip a folder correctly and submitted an empty zip file is honestly depressing.

      That being said, even knowing what Linux is probably puts your tech literacy above most people so I doubt that was the case here.

    • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.netEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      I agree, you’ve captured much of why I came away from the article feeling a bit ‘hmmm’.

      Something I read somewhere that I found super interesting is that on Windows, when a process completes, the user often gets a notification or popup alerting them to this, whereas on Linux, it’s more normal for there to not be any confirmation messages when a process is finished. I hadn’t consciously realised this difference until I read this and reflected on how many times I’d have to double check things when I first started using Linux.

  • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
    281·
    5 months ago

    To reinforce the author’s views, with my own experience:

    I’ve been using Linux for, like, 20 years? Back then I dual booted it with XP, and my first two distros (Mandriva and Kurumin) are already discontinued. I remember LILO.

    So I’m probably a programmer, right? …nope, my grads are Linguistics and Chemistry. And Linux didn’t make me into a programmer either, the most I can do is to pull out a 10 lines bash script with some websearch.

    So this “Linux is for programmers” myth didn’t even apply to the 00s, let alone now.

    You need a minimum of 8GB of RAM and a fairly recent CPU to do any kind of professional work at a non-jittery pace [in Windows]. This means that if you want to have a secondary PC or laptop, you’ll need to pay a premium for that too.

    Relevant detail: Microsoft’s obsession with generative models, plus its eagerness to shove wares down your throat, will likely make this worse. (You don’t use Copilot? Or Recall? Who cares? It’ll be installed by default, running in the background~)

    Linux, on the other hand, can easily boot up on a 10-year-old laptop with just 2GB of RAM, and work fine. This makes it the perfect OS for my secondary devices that I can carry places without worrying about accidental damage.

    My mum is using a fossil like this. It has 4GB or so; it’s a bit slow but it works with an updated Mint, even if it wouldn’t with Windows 10.

    Sure, you can delay an update [in Windows], but it’s just for five weeks.

    I gave the link a check… what a pain. For reference, in Linux Mint, MATE edition:

    That’s it. You click a button. It’s probably the same deal in other desktop environments.

  • twig@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    3·
    5 months ago

    This is not a very good article.

    It’s full of very weird qualifiers: “not a programmer,” “studied computer science,” “tech writer.” This person is not an average user, and they kind of do everything they can to make sure the reader knows that. Then, while trying to say Linux is for average users, the author suddenly is claiming to be just that.

    Linux is easier to use now than when I started using it, a little over six years ago. But it does require at least a basic curiosity to learn.