What's up with this mentality of "getting people to switch to linux"...

What's up with this mentality of "getting people to switch to linux", where adoption is supposedly the goal of the project as well as software written for the OS?

I see it a lot, comments about how some design choice is bad because it makes it harder to switch, or how linux isn't user-friendly enough, or how CLI is bad because unfamiliar users prefer GUIs or something.

I just don't get it. I use linux because I personally prefer the unixy way of doing most tasks. If I wanted to use Windows or OS X, I'd just use them instead of linux. I write software for myself, and if other people like the software I've written that's cool. Many developers are the same way. That's the whole point.

Demands that devs make their programs more user-friendly make no sense to me. The target user is, more often than not, the developer himself. It's exactly as user-friendly as it needs to be. The goal of most linux developers is to have functional software that works as they like it to work. To that end, I can understand why you'd want some adoption and a larger user base, but I don't understand why we should be writing software in a way to attract windows or OS X users. I don't need my OS to be like those OSes. I certainly don't understand why I should care if my grandma uses Ubuntu or something.

Attached: 1554490564961.png (901x1546, 1022K)

My wife Satania is so cute

If Linux was a superior product for everyday use it wouldn't need this kind of gurilla marketing, it would just slowly spread naturally like it did on servers

That's the thing, though. There is no superior tool for every task. For some people and use cases, Windows is fine. It does what they need it to do, in the way they prefer it to be done. Awesome. But for me, Linux does the things I need it to do in the way I prefer it done.

I can see why Microsoft or Apple would push adoption of their products. They're companies. They have a profit motive. But I don't understand why Linux should be pushing adoption and "user-friendliness" as the primary goal. I like how it works and I don't care if other people do. Certainly, I don't care to put in significant work to make my software appeal to others. Maybe if I was selling it, but I'm not.

>target user is, more often than not, the developer himself
this should almost never be the case
I'll add this, a lot of people want reliable software (maybe they have a business to run and need the software to do so) and use computers for their original goal: as tools. They don't care about what the dev wants or what he thinks, they need a practical tool to do their work. This is where both your philosophy and the free software philosophy (which often includes no responsibility for the software released) usually fail.

>this should almost never be the case
Why? I don't understand why, if I write some software that accomplishes what I need it to do, I should spend extra time making sure it also appeals to you.

>they need a practical tool to do their work.
Then contribute to an existing project so it better suits your needs, write it yourself, or switch to Windows or something.

This is not accurate because it doesn't exist in a vacuum. Microsoft , Apple and other altternatves have spent an absolutely fortune over the years pushing their OSes , courting developers, features etc.. PR and advertising among other things.

Linux (as a full OS) does not have a single point of origin nor is it corporate with money dedicated to adoption and the like. Its actually way more impressive that Linux has spread as it did in the wake of this.

To get to OP's discussion, its a number of things. because it doesn't have a single entity pushing it as a way to monetize like Microsoft and Apple did, it has a whole bunch of people with varying ideas over what it should be and should do. These people instead are technically adept/interested and often have problems with both functional and philosophical issues elsewhere in software. The "evangelism" is self-directed and for often both ideological (ie Stallman FSF type striving for computing that respects your freedoms) and practical (Linux doesn't spy on you, gives you choices, and doesn't fuck things up like Windows 10 or baby you The Apple Way as OSX).

Also, because of the problems with the proprietary nature and business centralization of those who guide the other OSes, getting people to "switch" to Linux becomes important for support of things like software and whatnot. Much like other things Linux related, its up to the users, the communities they develop, and even the businesses/services they form to advocate for Linux instead. Switching means games gets ported, people don't build their programs with Windows specific middleware, hardware/firmware is compatible or supported etc

WTF I don't remember posting this

I think this addresses something I didn't quite articulate.

If you want to write software that appeals to a wider audience, go right ahead. I don't think that's a bad thing at all. But going with your examples, personally I don't care if games get ported or if Windows developers release Linux builds of their applications, or if new hardware is supported on day one. Those things don't matter to me.

I'm not bothered by the fact that some people want those things, and that those people want higher adoption for the reasons you mentioned. I'm bothered by the attitude that higher adoption is *obviously* what we should be working towards and that if you don't work toward that same goal you're clearly dumb or incompetent. Nah, it's just that I have a completely different use case and couldn't give less of a shit about those specific goals.

I guess as a hypothetical, what drives me up the wall is:
>I don't like the way this works
>Pull requests welcome.
>Ugh! This is why linux will never be a mainstream desktop OS!
...and?

Attached: 1559531105436.jpg (701x1024, 89K)

>contribute to an existing project so it better suits your needs, write it yourself, or switch to Windows
My point is, if I own a manufacturing plant or I'm the head of a school or something like that, I'm not interested in any of those options. I'm interested in getting my job done, I don't really care about software or how it works.
You asked for reasons. This is just one. Computers were developed and exist today, because of the needs described above. Most software exists today for the same reason. It's only natural that some people want Linux to play a larger part in all of this, you may not care about business, but this answers your question "why many people want Linux to be so and so?".
Another reason would be that many Jow Forumsitizens really hate Microsoft, so they would really love to see them lose their dominant position.

elitism and autism

I would love to Linux as my dev os for my next job but I know that won't happen and I'll be stuck with winblows. In fact, now that Steam games have pretty frequent Linux compatibility I see no practical reason to ever use winblows again.

I bet satania is the kind of person who smells bad even after they shower

Attached: 1564178901955.png (300x310, 4K)

If you operate a business like that, then you should either pay someone to write the software, pay me to write the software, or use some other software that already does what you need.

I get that you, as an abstract, may want software that does something specific, or you may want additional functionality. What I don't understand is why *I*, as a developer of a piece of open source, who has written the software for my own personal use, should care what you want.

If I want some piece of FOSS software to do something different, I either make a suggestion to the developers and see if they agree, or I write the code myself and submit a PR, because I understand that their goal is not to please me, and there is no reason that it necessarily should be.

>What's up with this mentality of "getting people to switch to linux"

They want to validate their own shitty life choices.

WSL

oh god i sure hope so i just want to smell her stinky butthole

And yet Windows needed Microsoft monopoly to be popular.

why do they draw satania's boobs so much bigger than they are in the anime? i notice it with her far more than any other character

Well, for some fucked up reason people want more turbo normies using GNU/Linux. Fuck if I know why. Now we have Turbo Normie DE for every distro. This of course results in turbo normies posting on GNU/Linux forums, clogging it up with their big turbo normie turds.

Attached: 23_ce224200edda7b9962c29ace3693cce5.jpg (880x622, 107K)

Adoption drives whether other people write software, sell compatible hardware (or write drivers), etc, which means you don't need to do it yourself. The more shit you need to do yourself, the more shit you need to do before you can get whatever you decided to turn a computer on for done -- remember, computing is a means to an end.

Linux already has a sufficient userbase of technical users for that, though.

>If you operate a business like that, then you should either pay someone to write the software
100% agree
Most free software also wouldn't exist or would be much less developed without funding. That's mostly done by companies because they found some people that do the free software they need (e.g. RHEL gets money from doing business and gives a part of that to the Linux devs and also funds Fedora). So catering more to the market would mean more money for development and that would lead to better software. So this can be a reason why some people want Linux to cater more to the market.
As I've said, another reason would simply be that because use in industry has been the goal in most of history (for both hardware and software), some would just like to see this grow.
Yet another one would be to see M$ and other go down.
I think some gave other answers as well. So there are many reasons why someone would want more "user-friendly" etc.

>Ugh! This is why linux will never be a mainstream desktop OS!
I guess most people give this answer to those that insist they should use Linux unless they're retarded and there's no reason not to use it.

BECAUSE LARGE BREASTS ON AN UNDERAGE TEENAGE GIRL IS HOT user.

JEEZ, WHY DO THEY NEVER UNDERSTAND THIS

Attached: go home gamer girl.png (480x477, 263K)

Gnome developer mindset
That's why Linux is a mess.
Volunteer developers lack lack a "service" motivation.

The higher the user base, the higher chance that someone will get involved. Sure most of the people that will adopt 'easy' software wont be as technically skilled but you not only need skilled people in the development, generic stupid users can still be good for beta testing, veryfing the design, creating artwork and translations for projects they like.
Generally people putting their time and effort into something want it to be acknowledged by other people, unless they are totally burned out.

> I don't care if others like it
More users = more donations = more developers = more software
User your brain, dipshit. Did you write all the software you use? No? Then you benefit from the popularity of Linux. People have to expend resiurces and time to maintain and distribute free software and most of them need some incentive to do that.