We must stop gatekeeping FOSS.
This crap annoys me to bloody hell and back. I myself managed to avoid all those rude comments and purposefully damaging suggestions only because my sociophobia made me to fully read Arch and Debian wikies instead of asking newbie questions on forums, when I was first installing a system and troubleshooting it all by myself - just to avoid the forums. Also with my cPTSD I still have trust issues so I checked what some of people suggest "as a joke" and got scared of ever asking for help in tech field at all. And now I have some courage to say that I hate them for what they do.
I absolutely love FOSS community for all their ideas and sharing and how creative, cool and actually helpful the guys are! But there are some rotten parts, those bloody impostors.
Maybe I'll open a new world for you, but if you're burnt out or in no mood, you can just log out and not doomscroll and not answer anyone, and not recommend "as a joke" to "remove French language package" etc. Using newbies as a decoy for your anger is pure shite. You were newbies too and if you say you weren't "that stupid" - I congratulate you, not everyone is that lucky. For example, I myself got my own personal laptop only in 2024 and am far from a schoolboy age. Stop treating people like everyone is rich and smart af. Tech field is not easy, programming is not easy, troubleshooting and debugging is even more difficult. You don't have to guide every newbie through everything but help-related forums are supposed to be FOR HELPING people and not to mock them and tell them to RTFM. Also, lots of FOSS projects just do not have that fucking manual. No blame at all, I respect every FOSS project and we must keep in mind that most of those projects never get even mere donations. But this means, you cannot send a person to RTFM if there is no FM.
Am fully aware how most non tech related people are on the consumerism side but not al of them are such on purpose. Not our duty to educate them yet we can ignore their shite and choose to not be assholes towards those who just starts to learn. Tbh my fave related story is how StackOverflow lost all those newbies to ChatGPT. The reason is same - chatGPT is polite and will even tell them to RTFM in a normal humane conversation.
You do not have to be there for every newbie but you can choose to not be an asshole either.
Another huge part of this crappy gatekeeping is about custom ROMs. I've seen it everywhere - "do not even try to flash it yourself if you never did it before or you will brick your device". Ok so you're gonna do this for all those in need?? Fun fact: 'tis almost impossible to brick a mobile device plus 'tis even less possible if you're following the instructions all customs ROMs have. Btw you do NOT need Windows and Odin for flashing Samsungs, just use nice FOSS Heimdall from your preferred GNU/Linux distro.
When I was reading some general books on programming, like "your first year in code", I saw "jerk in tech" being mentioned even there. Sad thing it is.
Nowadays tech stuff is a vital thing to survive in this shite-powered world. Who knows, maybe a few years later that "dumb newbie with lamest code ever" will save your ass with their app. We must not gatekeep survivalistic skills, 'tis just inhumane. But ofc rude assholes from newbies must be ignored and avoided like rude assholes from expert side.
PS. Nay, I will not publish any of my code for y'all to mock because solo game development takes too long to complete even a wee game in a year, but aye all my games will be FOSS and free as in beer. But aye I will protect even my lame kindergarten level code bc if it works it is valid and also it will be fully free so go fork it and prove you can make it better you show-off.
End of rant. Y'all can hate me for this long toot but 'tis the state of the internet I've been seeing for more than a year already and it kinda hurts honestly. GNU culture wasna supposed to become something like this. We have a common enemy to fight - big tech, mega corps, the rich. Tf to gatekeep free and open stuff...
#FOSS #tech