Josh (00:00)
Hello, beautiful people and good morning. Now, this episode, we're going to dive deep into the dark underbelly of the elitism of open source. So, you know, have you ever noticed whenever you're trying to escape big tech and especially their walled gardens, and it seems like it can lead straight to another barrier. Now, picture this. You're fed up with surveillance capitalism.
and you decide to try open source alternatives, you know, like PeerTube, Onkast, Linux, one of the many distros, and you download the software, you join the community forum, you know, you're trying to make sure that everything goes right. So you ask what you seems to be a simple question and you're drowning in technical jargon that you don't understand.
bunch of these little trolls posting up the RTFM responses or let me Google that for you. And you get the distinct feeling that you've just been judged for not knowing anything about Linux, even though you don't. You're supposed to be having this built in knowledge base already there. And you just ask the stupid question that is like, is the sky blue?
the open source elitism. So we're basically the door is technically open, but not everyone has or gives a warm welcome to new people coming in. So we're going to unpack a little bit of what is the cause of this digital caste system seems like and undermining the very
essence of what open source is supposed to be really is to bring everybody into it from all walks of life. So let's actually get into the weeds, the meat and potatoes of what's going on here. So originally, the reason why I wanted to spark up this conversation is for myself. I've been dabbling in Linux for over a couple of years now.
If you're watching this, you obviously know that I am a big proponent of own cast open source software. have pure tube. I've gone through the trials and tribulations of going through the install process of pure tube. Got hosting of all open source software starting with a started with a home labs testing. So I'm fully into open source in the Linux community as a whole.
So what started this is that I wanted to try out Fedora because Fedora 42 had just recently released. And I'm like, you know what, let's try this out and see what it is. Let's just dabble in and then I have a spare drive and just go ahead and install it. So get one thing after another, got it installed with some issues, of course, with any kind of Linux system that you'll come across something.
And I know just by saying that I probably have awoken the trolls coming out from underneath the basements and typing fiercely on their their Cheeto encrusted keyboards. I know that's that's that's being mean. I'm sorry. It's Dorito encrusted. But anyways, so I had gone through the whole process of getting steam installed and trying to work on.
installing a game called Secret World Legends. Now, I had done this last year and one of the things it took, took, it took some getting some information and trying to figure out what exactly is going on. Why is it not going correctly? Because, you know, within Windows, you install a game and it just works, Todd Howard. So I had that,
feeling in back of my mind is, okay, it's not gonna be that easy. This is an older game. So, you know, it's not gonna be as easy as Windows install. But two hours later, we finally found the information and was able to get it going. So in this case, I was trying to find my old video from last year. And I was going through the process, even before getting to that.
It was coming up where the frame rate was like pretty much nonexistent. It was like one or two frames per second. It was a slideshow. The images are, know, the characters in the background scenes weren't even loading. It was just a black screen and it was just a complete mess. So went through that process of going through what I did my previous previous video and was able to get to go get it to work.
The only issue was now had the chat bar, the chat box and the game's main menu was, you know, not loading up its correct overlay, its image, the background and stuff. So I was like, OK, this is not working well. And I know I've seen some people say that they were able to get Marvel rivals to work under Linux. I was like, let me go ahead and install that. And unfortunately, that did not go through. So
That led me to write up a short blog, a short post on forums stating that, know, gaming on Linux is almost there. It's it's there for a majority of the games. It's just a few of them are not you are not know not there yet. So that's why I said I titled it titled it Linux gaming is almost there. forget exactly what how I.
titled it, but it's almost there, really. That led to, you know, I guess opening up the floodgates for one particular troll to come in and decided to make themselves known on my Blue Sky post and says, you're just a Microsoft shill and you're the one that's spreading the fud. I'm like. What? What crawled up your butt and died, really? And I.
quickly took a look at their profile and this person or this bot account has just been spouting elitist, basically as I called them, elitist mouthpiece for some odd strange reason. They feel that Microsoft has done them wrong. Microsoft has killed their puppy. I don't know, but they have made it their own life mission.
to post anywhere, everywhere that saying that, you know, maybe someone had posted up that they're having some trouble with Linux and they instantly come in and say, you know what? You're just just go back to Windows. That's where you need to go back to. And it's just like, I'm thinking myself, it's this elitism that, you know, is killing. Well, it can kill a momentum of open source and Linux.
And it's just like, why would you go through this? Because, yes, we understand Windows is a bloated piece of garbage. But the thing is, is that majority of the people who use it can use it with no problems. I use air quotes there, but a lot of the stuff that people want to use is very capable of being run.
99 % of the time, no problem on Windows. It's just when trying to have that same experience on Linux, 50-50 might have problems or other times, no problems whatsoever. Like right now, I'm trying out get Bazite installed on the gaming computer and it is not working.
at all. So this is one of those things where somebody can post up and say, I never have any problem with my machine. It must be user error. Go back to Windows. And it's just like, happened to the welcoming committee or just the overall spirit of a venture of embracing technology and trying to get things to work?
reaching out and getting your hands slapped because you don't know the answer. And that's why I wanted to talk about this and actually bring it to light that it can affect the open source community in more ways than one. I talked about this a couple of episodes ago, especially talking with like Mastodon and trying to get people to have patience.
and getting into the open source and the FedEverse and stuff like that. It's it's almost like, you know. Now, I don't want to call it gatekeeping, but it does seem like a lot of people shouldn't say a lot, but a good majority of the silent or the vocal minority. I know I'm trying to find my words here. The vocal minority is gatekeeping the
the experience of Linux and open source to what they deem as the the few capable people that only should be allowed to use this software and systems. And what I have to say to them is like, you're wrong. Linux, the open source software that is out there is for everyone. And if you want more people to
or to find more people that have the passion for open source and Linux and to continue to make it better than what it is, then you're going to have to stop with this gatekeeping elitism being an elitist mouthpiece for whatever reason, shape or form that you think that you're guarding the sanctity of Linux. You're not. You're actually hurting it. You're destroying it.
Now I understand that this stuff is not for everybody and yes, it's going to be some growing pains going through certain aspects of when people want to try out what Linux is all about and they're looking at, what distribution distro should I use? And they're hit with like hundred different choices and they're like, I don't know where even to start. Where do I go?
And that's why it's a great thing that people are out there helping with creating guides or tutorials. If you're a beginner and you want to have to start with like a Windows experience, try Linux Mint or what was this other distro that anyways, it's something where, you know, these people are out there trying to help others that are trying.
that are wanting to look for alternatives or are curious about Linux and they're actively helping and say, hey, I can point you to where you can find the information and you let me know if you have any other issues. Basically guiding somebody with not doing a work for them instead of holding their hands and say, hey, if you want to go into the garden and, you know, plant some seeds and
in a couple of months or a couple of weeks, you have tomatoes. Here you go. Here are some seeds and here's a hand trowel. Go at it. You're going to make mistakes. No problem. You got this. But we're there for you. We're not going to do the work for you, but we got your back. So I think what we need is a lot more of those type of community outreach and interactions instead of these trolls that are
just, you to put it plainly, I don't know what is up with them. I know it's the internet and there are those people out there, but it's just, know, I don't know what purpose that they seem that they serve. There's this, you know, actively harming the community that they're wanting to protect.
Like this guy, know how I responded to him. It wasn't my best work. He did get me or they did get me. But it was just one of those things where I was like, you know, why? If you just took like five seconds to look through my posting history and what I've posted or anything like that, you'll see that I'm not this Microsoft shill as a
wearing my mixer shirt. But you know what? Mixer was completely different from that. That's a whole other story where it's this beam was created by this group of people to be something good for the live streaming community. Unfortunately, they let Microsoft acquire them, turn it into Mixer, and it just went from gold to cow poop.
and pretty much a short order. So if you are a troll and you want to leave a comment saying I am some big corporate backed Microsoft shill or anything like that, you know, just look through my my rest of my videos and maybe have a different tack because. Open source is a great thing.
It's great that we have these alternatives to Windows or to YouTube or Twitch or even TikTok or Twitter. It's just that we have these great sources of information and systems that are out there constantly being built. And the only problem is, is that the people who build them, they don't have the mindset of the average user.
So when you're doing the user onboarding process, let's take, for instance, like Mastodon. At the beginning, a couple of years ago, it was very troubling for the average user to decide or to figure out exactly how to create an account. And we're slowly getting to that point where they're looking at, you know,
trying to open up their services and their platforms to the masses. And I can hear those type of people saying, we don't want those people here. This is going to ruin the entire experience and platform. This is a safe space for us. And it's like, you know what?
That's cool and all that's that's great because you can create your own instance on Mastodon and be the only person there talking to yourself until the end of time. That is your safe space. Congratulations. You can have it. It's yours. But for the rest of us, we would like to talk to each other and bring in some more ideas and intellects and all sorts of different showcasing of
what we can do and how to better enrich the user experience with open source and especially with Linux. now I'm also, I was very surprised when I was able to get Fedora working because that was a whole other process. had to go and install Fedora 41 and then go through the upgrade path through that because it
I was able to get 42 installed, but I could not get past the onboarding because it crashed when you try to enter your time zone. And there was no way to get around it. It was a bug. So I found a way to get around it. But the thing is, is that without, I found that out by going to the Fedora forums and looking up.
onboarding crash or I forget exactly what I searched for, but found the solution. People were saying, oh yeah, it's something's happened. Something got bored. And one way if you want to get past it or upgrade is to do the upgrade from 41 to 42 instead of a fresh install of 42. So that didn't cause any trouble of.
All of it let the wrong people in and all of it's a crap shoot. It's a complete cluster. All these Windows users using Fedora and my God, dogs and cats living together. It's, you know, the world continues on. It's great. It's awesome. So I had some issues with the Fedora install process right now with Bazite. So I'm going to work on that after
recording of this episode, but it's just one of the things where it's like, you know, your use case is not the same as everybody else's. Yes, you might have your install be perfectly fine and you're off off the races and you're good to go until, you know, the next upgrade. And even then, no problem there because it's a miracle. Your computer works great, but it's underlying.
issue of technology itself is not going to be 100 % every single time. And I've had no problem. I used Linux Mint for months, pretty much almost all of, most of 2024 was under Linux Mint. And I had no problem. Yeah, there's some games you can't play. You can't play Fortnite.
You can play Overwatch. It depends on the game and the kernel level anti-cheat is the main issue with some of these games. It's not because it's a problem that the code is causing any issue. It's just, know, the developers, the publishers of those games have decided that they do not want their games played on Linux.
It's their game and that's their business decision to do so. But the problem is, is that it's. It's becoming more of an issue where a lot more games are going that route where. People are complaining that why didn't you develop your game with or port your game to Linux? Well.
Linux is a very small sliver of the gaming population. Well, Windows is the dominant slice of that pie. there's a little bit a smaller slice is on Mac OS. Yes, I know there's there's gaming on Mac OS and an even smaller slice of that pie is Linux. And it's great to see, especially with the
introduction of the Steam Deck that Valve put out a couple of years ago that helped push the developers and Valve and everyone else involved into using what is called Proton. Proton is like an underlying emulator. don't want to put it simply, it tricks the game thinking that it's being played under Windows and layman's terms. But the thing is that
So many games are able to be played through proton and are playable on Steam Deck, which is a great thing to see It's unfortunately a large games, you know, fortnight ballerant pretty much Any any game from riot you can't play on Linux There was just another one that pulled I don't think it was apex. I Think it was apex legends. I don't quote me on that, but there was another battle royale type of game
that yeah, it was Apex Legends that you could play, but the developers and actually more weren't in line with the publishers were saying, no, we don't want that because we're trying to combat cheats. And it's an unfortunate thing with cheaters using these systems, especially within Linux, because it's a little bit easier to do than it is in like Windows. I'm not saying that it's not possible in Windows.
it very much is, but they saw that there was a higher chance of people using cheating software that ran or were being emulated as what they saw from Linux. So they decided to pull all support from Linux or, you know, if you were trying to play Apex on Linux, you can't your your account. I think you can get banned or anything like that. So it's.
Something where it's like, even bother installing Apex Legends if you're running Linux. And the thing is that as they're trying to combat cheats, the cheaters and stuff like that, it's an arms race that yes, they might be successful for a month or two, but the cheaters will come in with something better. And then a month or two after that, then they can get taken down. it's just back and forth. It's pretty much you cannot win.
And the issue is, especially on Windows, what they have, what they call kernel level anti-cheat, where these anti-cheat measures, the software is embedded directly into the actual code of Windows itself. That's where it lives because it has to have access to everything that goes on. And that in of itself is.
worrying because if a cheater. King crack, I'm not saying that they can or they haven't, but if they go through that that process that they have full access of the kernel of Windows and that is basically you're at the highest level. There is really much not anything else to go further. Kernel level is the top. And if you can get cracked through that, you can pretty much.
destroy a Windows install or hack or do all nefarious stuff. So it's this arms race that has gotten to this point where how far do you think they're going to go where we're looking at. You're rarely at the summit of Mount Everest. The only more further up you can go is space. And it's like really
Are we going to go even further than kernel levels where basically you have to are you renting a machine from Riot and going through that whole process and you know there you know there's probably some executive that is thinking like that hmm yes if we have all our players actually pay us for the hardware we have full control well I'm sure there is something like that but you know game gamers
world over would essentially riot in the streets if that was the case. And I really don't see a world where something like that would happen because that is like doomsday pretty much. But looking back at things and how we've gotten from this elitism and how these game companies are trying to combat cheaters and
trying to get more people away from corporate focused software like Windows, Mac, Adobe and stuff like that and finding alternatives. We really have to open ourselves up to understanding the average user. We have to pretty much put ourselves in their shoes and not think of why you're asking that question. Everyone knows that.
I know that that person over there knows it. Why don't you? That kind of mentality has to stop. If we really want to ensure the further survival of Linux going forward and the survival of open source software is something that we have to take upon ourselves and cultivate a more welcoming atmosphere of people who are
interested or experimenting or her just, you know, wanting to find out what this Linux thing is all about. Let's not push them away. Let's actually, you know, say, hey, here's the tools. Let's get you started. And that's pretty much what we have to do going forward. Now, if you have any experience with these elitist mouthpiece trolls, I would definitely love to hear your stories.
Those are very interesting to hear and to read about. Or if you had a great experience with your first time starting up a Linux install and going through the whole process and learning and finding places that are more welcoming than other places, definitely let me know in the comments down below or join our community at independentcreator.space. Our forums are there. got...
our website and would definitely love to hear your story. Now.
Until next week, I want you to think about open source and what we can do together being more open. So with that, have a good night and I'll see you later, taters.