MurphCID wrote: ⤴Tue Oct 30, 2018 7:14 am
Plus back in the day (late 90's, early 2000's) the Slackware guys were cool on the net unlike the Debian and Red Hat guys who were generally elitist douches, who screamed RFTM on any question, and were into the APT vs RPM holy wars. The Slackware guys just sat back, and knew they were the real elite, and did not need to show off compared to the Red Hat and Debian guys. I was actually banned from a board (in my Mandrake days) for daring to suggest that GUIs were not bad things, and the Linux needed to emulate Windows/Apple in easy to use GUI tools, and programs. The Slackware guys were like..."Dude, you need to learn the command line, and chill".
I can make a similar correlation between artists in the music world, having spent years as a promoter. The newer/intermediately famous bands were generally the most arrogant. The newer bands would think that they were cool merely
because they were a band, whereas the intermediately famous bands would be snobby but less arrogant. The bands who had been in the game for years or decades, and had reached a certain point of notoriety and influence were more chilled out and down to earth. Some of the best conversations I had were with long-term, influental artists who were very nice poeople.
The same can be said, to an extent, in Linux. Ubuntu users [and Mint, is has to be said] can be very much of the mindset that they are cool and better than Windows users. In the intermediate side, I have spent quite a bit of time on the Debian forums, which have a reputation for being very rude to new users. The mindset of those forums - which I have adopted myself at times - is very much "if you can't read around, don't bother coming here, we won't help, go back to Ubuntu". I do not necessarily disagree with this mindset, but that's how it is there [less so these days since the post-systemd flight].
When it comes to Slackware, the community is very helpful, knowledgeable, patient and laid back. The reason for this, I can only say from my own personal experience, is that I know that there is plenty I
don't know [I'm sure Plato said that the wise man knows that he knows nothing]. The more I delve into the OS, the more there is to put into practice and I probably will never be an expert - but I am glad to be a part of it [note that the defintion of 'expert' is relative, not absolute].
That's not to say that I don't get annoyed with certain mindsets among newbies, which is part of the reason I hardly ever post in the Mint forums. There are certain attitudes that I find are damaging - for the user, their machine and the community. However, I am mostly of the opinion that if it just works for you, just use it. For me, it is a permanent road of learning and self-discovery from those with more knowledge. Humility comes with experience.
