I recently came across the Stop Omarchy website, and it pretty much sums up why I find the Linux community so fucking exhausting, and also part of why I gave up on linux entirely.
This campaign explicitly tells maintainers:
“For open-source maintainers, don’t accept bug reports that arise on Omarchy systems.”
Not “require a reproducible example.” Reject them as part of a political boycott. There are also lists of companies to boycott and people to avoid for funding the project.
Apparently, appreciating someone’s software means endorsing their entire worldview. For these people, everything is political. Someone with the wrong opinions takes a piss? That’s a fascist piss, and now the toilet manufacturer needs to issue an apology.
Demanding that everyone else participate in your moral outrage, right down to rejecting users’ bug reports only tells us making better software clearly isn’t the priority. You only care about policing ideological purity.
Anyway, this is one more of the many reasons I think desktop Linux will NEVER become mainstream. These insufferable people are likely the same people dismissing your problems on linux, saying “skill issue” and “pebcak”. The same people telling you that you’re failing as a person if you are running Windows or macOS. All they do is get in the way of progress and irritate everyone. And they’ve almost completely infested the linux space.
TL;DR: The year of the Linux desktop can wait. I have some moral grandstanding to do.
Edit: to everyone saying “then stay on Windows”: look at the name of this community and breathe a sigh of relief. Omarchy is still a Linux distro, with the same fragmentation and usability problems that put us off desktop Linux in the first place. Mocking the level of outrage around it doesn’t mean any of us is about to install the thing, or even look in its general direction.
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Ignore the downvotes on this post OP. Every downvote comes from some emotional person or bot. I think the “linux desktop year” can happen but this does put a damper into that overall goal.
There are only two paths:
- Outright reject anything that DHH is part of
- Support a Nazi white supremacist
Personally, I choose the former. Omarchy needs to be squelched at all costs.
Why does Omarchy need to be “squelched at all costs”? What concrete harm would the distro hypothetically succeeding actually cause? I am asking genuinely.
I’ve read those two articles of his, about london and gypsies, and I think plenty of his views are ignorant and/or far-right. But accuracy matters: on that stopomarchy website, it says “wrote another comparing Roma people to wolves to be shot and deported”. That passage says shoot wolves and deport Roma people, not shoot Roma people. The analogy is dehumanizing enough to criticize without implying he said something he didn’t.
More importantly, using someone’s software isn’t a blanket endorsement of their politics. “Reject everything he touches or support a Nazi” is a false choice, not a genuine argument.
Maybe he did specifically say he supports the nazis and their politics, but I didn’t see anything resembling that on the website that advocates for his takedown. Nor did I care to look more into it, since after all, I’m done using any linux distro on the desktop.
The practical harm is making more and more projects focused on compatibility with a technofascist-funded stack over independent alternatives. Providing tech support for Omarchy means doing free labor for a multi-million dollar ideological project, or worse, drinking from that oligarch funding stream and becoming financially beholden to the anti-tolerance side of the FOSS culture war.
I haven’t been keeping up with the Linux space for a while, so I was thinking more from the end user’s perspective, and not about the influence over the tech/development that one’s funding could buy.
If otherwise independent projects start depending on said funding and/or tech, giving DHH a disproportionate influence over their development does become a legitimate worry.
Looking at it this way, I can see why some people want to avoid that.
I hadn’t even considered this perspective, so thank you for bringing it up.
You know who else said that rejecting Nazis is a false choice?
Nazis.
Rejecting Nazis is the only choice.
Except I didn’t say that.
My argument was that using someone’s software doesn’t automatically mean endorsing their politics. “Boycott everything he touches or you support Nazism” is the false choice I’m objecting to, not rejecting Nazis.
Going back to my previous comment though, what specifically makes him a Nazi rather than a chud parroting far-right talking points? I’m not saying he definitely isn’t one. I’m asking what evidence supports that specific label.
Well don’t use Linux, don’t interact with the community and don’t complain. Pretty simple solution for you.
No u
Oh but I can’t. You can’t escape the linux hivemind anywhere you go. If you post a problem you’re having with Windows and asking for help, there’s always a helpful individual telling you that you’re “literally selling your soul to Microslop” and should switch to Linux ASAP.
So what I’m doing with my posts is documenting why one should not in fact switch to linux.
Then don’t switch? You want to argue. This community exists to bait people into arguing which if what you used it for. Find a different hobby.
I’m already not switching. That doesn’t mean I can’t explain why. And you’re free to think that’s a pointless hobby. After all, getting into an argument about whether I’m here to argue would be a bit much, even for me lol.
