The H8ers Club

I’ve been in many a Linux forum and from reading posts and writing posts I have come up with these unwritten rules of a typical Linux forum. While some of these rules apply to newer users, I tend to use them all.

Rule 1: Do not start a thread about anything unless it is favorable towards the distribution or you actually need help with something.

Rule 2: In your signature always post your computer specs i.e. processor architecture type, video card model, amount of memory, sound card model, hard drive(s).

Rule 3: Gated Community. This is often confused with the singular word community. You are a guest, even though you are using their software on your computer and are making their user base bigger.

Rule 4: Ignore it. In every gated community you will run into the dick. The dick needs to stroke his own ego. You see, some people feel the need for name calling to make their own pathetic lives feel better by transferring anger, obviously from some early childhood trauma.

Rule 5: Always try to help. Even if it is just a link. The time it takes people to point out that others should use the search they could have found it and helped.

Rule 6: Do not question authority. Your just asking for a bunch of serf’s to jack your thread.

Rule 7: If your a joker, like me, you have to type that you are joking. Some Linux users suffer from battered women’s syndrome. Everything is taken at face value and every perception is misconstrued in a different light.

Rule 8: You are not in America when you are in a forum. There is no freedom of speech or democracy. Sometimes it’s like a concentration camp and sometimes it’s like a psych ward.

Rule 9: Kiss Ass. Trust me, you see it in almost every forum, so you might as well swallow your pride.

That’s about it, I hope this has helped and Rule 9, I was joking.

Before I begin writing I will tell you that I use Linux as a main Operating System, I do not dual boot and I really enjoy using Linux. Although overwhelming, I do enjoy the choices I have when configuring what desktop environment I use and the software I can install. I would always recommend Linux to most people, but not everyone. Why not everyone you ask? Well here are the reasons I would not recommend it to everyone and why I think they will never win the Desktop wars.

1. Too Many Distributions: I would list them but I’d like to keep this short.
2. Unwritten rules of the distributions forums: This will be in the next post.
3. No Accountability: The feeling that if you are giving away a free operating system It’s o.k. to release pre-beta as stable. Especially if the distribution has a paid-support section. Maybe it’s just me that sees this.
4. Piss poor attitude: “If you don’t like the distribution you should use another one”. This one really gets me, after you spent days setting up a Linux distro and you go to some forum’s asking for change or how you can change it yourself or even why you don’t like something. Like clock-work some wise ass will always chime in with the before mentioned. Not all Linux forums are like this, I just wish I could say few are like this.
5. Infighting amongst distributions: Well not so much the distributions, it’s the certain users that feel they need to tell everyone and their grandmothers how their distribution great and golden and yours is shit. You kind of think this would be done by 13 year olds and sometimes it is, most of the time it isn’t.
6. Community: More like gated community. I’ll get to that in my next post.
7. Cult Mentality: Never question authority, you will be villanized.

While all these do not happen in every Linux distribution community, I wish I could say they do not happen in any. I rarely post in Linux forums because it seems like some Linux users suffer from battered women’s syndrome.