Re: Fedora proposing to remove X11 Gnome

On 2025-04-30, CrudeSausage <crude@sausa.ge> wrote:

On 2025-04-30 06:24, Borax Man wrote:
>
< snipped for brevity >
>

 
To be honest, it was many years of using a PC before I too understood
that there could be a viable alternative on the PC, and I was more "tech
literate" than average.  This was in the 90s.  I knew of OS2 and some
toy OS's.  I started to get annoyed with Windows, and desire features
and abilities that it was lacking.  When I found that Linux was a thing,
it kind of mostly met what I was looking for (more power!).

>
I was always curious, so it didn't take long for me to learn that there
were things other than DOS back in the day. I got acquainted with
Windows 3.0 fairly quickly, learned abut MacOS quickly thereafter and
soon developed an interest in OS/2 since my nerdy cousin assured me that
it was better than everything under the sun. Admittedly, I remained in
the Windows camp during that time but kept trying Linux out from about
1994 or 1995 on. I recall installing Slackware on my PC through
floppies, but I had no idea how to get much done. I tried again in 1998,
but I couldn't get sound to work and the resolution couldn't get past
800x600 (I had no idea what I was doing). By 1999, I was ready to move
but Linux itself wasn't entirely ready for what I wanted to do. I only
really started using it as the main OS on my Dell laptop around 2008 (it
worked great on that), but even then I kept Windows as my overall main
operating system. Once the PRISM revelations emerged, my interest in
Linux grew and I kept trying to make it my default operating system with
various degrees of success. Now, I can confidently say that there are
way more benefits than there are drawbacks, no matter what hardware I
run it on.
>

I had seen references to Linux here and there on the Internet in the
late 90s, but I just supposed that as a system I would not either be
able to run it, or make good use of it.  I was invested in DOS, DOS
games and programs, programming in DOS so while I didn't like Windows
much, I wasn't that interested in leaving the ecosystem I did
understand.

However by 1999-2000, after having to reinstall windows again and again,
and knowing that staying in the past wasn't the way forward, thats when
I took Linux seriously, after hearing a bit more about it.  I still knew
very little, except it was good for the Internet and that it might be
good for "power users".

I was browsing a newsagency late 2000, saw a copy of Linux Format with a
Definite Linux 7.0 cover disk and decided to give it a try.  Then I
learned about it being a Unix close, about the Free Software movement,
and saw a bit more of a world of computing, with a long history that I
had seen references to, but was now a part of.

>
Windows does offer a good operating system, but the pain becomes worse
when you are aware that you can avoid a good chunk of it. If you are
like my students and don't even know what your operating system is,
you're likely to just put up with it. If you grew up with technology and
saw it progress, you're likely to be knowledgeable and aware that Linux
offers some respite. I'm an example of that. I can tolerate all sorts of
bullshit but even I have my breaking point.
>

 
One of the barriers, is people cannot really imagine anything better.
People just accepted in the 90s that computers were unstable and
crashed.  It was just a given, but when my friends asked me about Linux,
and I showed that I could burn a CD, listen to music and download a file
and browse *at the same time*, they were impressed.  Computers didn't
need to crash.  You can do reptetive tasks far, far more efficiently
than clicking through a series of GUI elements 24 times over.  These are
moments where people can realise they can do things, things they didn't
think they could do. Emacs was an experience like that too.  For year
just using basic editing, then finding you can select words, sentences,
transpose, etc.  I use emacs at work, (mostly for org mode) and people
think I'm using DOS, but when they see how I manage my todo lists, it
seems like magic.

>
I found Linux to be just as crashy as Windows in the late 90s. I had
hope that BeOS might penetrate the market since it was a lot more robust
than the two, but it went nowhere. I would say that Linux's core was
always quite stable but everything atop it not so much. In my opinion,
it only became rock solid in the last decade or so.
>

That was my experience too.  When I first used it, programs would just
dissapear, and leave a "core" file.  Individual programs DID crash more
than in Windows, but they rarely took the system down with it.  There
were fewer crashes on Windows, but they were often more catastrophic,
taking everything down with it.  A Linux program crash, well, it just
vanished.  At least everything else was usually untouchged.  When I
found I could telnet into the system, on the occasions the screen did
freeze, I could either kill the process, kill X, or shut the system
down, at least avoiding an unclean unmount.

But I would say by Red Hat 7.3 (the 2003 one), it was much better, and
improved since then.  As has, admittedly, Windows, though it has other
janky behaviour.