This “just use linux” mentality is peak broke-brain logic.

You think spending an hour every day troubleshooting and googling how to fix it is some badge of honor? Congrats, you saved $0 and burned the only free hour you had after work. Hope the "Freedom" was worth it.

Linux isn’t free. It costs time, energy, and attention — the three things high-performers guard with their life. Compile time, Maintenance, debugging, dependancies, cleanup — you’re bleeding hours to save pennies. That’s not frugality, that’s time poverty.

You’re not a developer. You’re a tired guy distro hopping at 10pm convincing yourself it’s “self care.” Meanwhile someone else paid $100 for Windows, finished a deck, hit the gym, and got 8 hours of sleep. But hey, you configured your system by hand. King shit.

And don’t even start with the “but privacy!” cope. 90% of y’all using Linux aren’t toppling goverments or hacking banks. You’re watching Youtube, checking Gmail, Twitter, and scrolling the same niche subreddit every night. You’re not optimizing for privacy, you’re optimizing for feeling morally superior while wasting time.

Time is the only real flex. You get more of it by buying it back. If that costs $100 for Windows, that’s a steal. If you’re in any field where leverage matters — CAD, Excel, Adobe — and you’re still compiling Linux from scratch like it’s 1999, you’re not serious.

This isn’t about being rich. It’s about understanding what moves the needle. High-output people don’t micromanage their PCs — they outsource. You want to be productive? Stop pretending Linux is a virtue. It’s not. It’s a time sink.

Based on: https://x.com/j0hnwang/status/1935839092542963826

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 66 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (15 children)

Unpopular opinion, but I install Linux on my computers and they just work for like 5 years straight, with me spending exactly 0 hours each day fixing anything. Whereas I fix other peoples stupid printer issues and Windows becoming incompatible with the hardware or some nasty messages from some antivirus or strange software, multiple times a year...

I see however how some disgrunteled people would write something like this.

  • source
  • hideshow 15 child comments
  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I've been on Linux for a year and a half now with zero downtime.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Been on this Windows install for 5 years or so, no hassle.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Hmm, interesting. But we all have different experiences anyway. I believe my mom's computer "broke" twice in the last two years during some major Windows updates. One time some service pack broke a lot of printers for quite a while and she was affected as well. I don't remember what the second incident was, since I didn't fix it, but it also required manual intervention. And she doesn't even do a lot with the thing except office stuff, documents and mails, so I doubt she was at fault.

    I certainly also had stuff break on Linux, but it's been kind of quiet the last years. But I'm kind of the wrong person to judge since I currently don't take part in everyday Windows use. At least not when I get to decide and maintain the computer. But I feel it has improved as well. There has been a time where I had to install my gaming windows several times because the order in which I installed all the drivers mattered for some reason. It got cluttered and slower over time so I had to reinstall it during the lifetime of a computer. And I had friends infected with trojans and cryptojacking malware every other month or so. Back then I had a very comfortable life full of hubris with my Linux on the desktop. Granted, it needed more fiddling at that time, but that was acceptable. But times have changed and everything got better and it's nothing like that anymore. And for a long time now.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I've been using it full time for 21 years, and dual boot for years before that. Early on it definitely took up a bit of time, but that's mostly because I was interested in breaking things and learning to fix them. Even 10-15 years ago I don't think I would have spent more than a few hours a month fixing things. These days it's a few hours a year, and that's only when I start messing around with something in a careless way.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Same. If I'm fixing something, it's because I did something I knew I shouldn't; which I rarely do. For instance, forced the upgrade of Ubuntu to 24.04 even though Canonical said that wasn't ready and had it disabled, but 24.04 was fine for new installs. I went out of my way to enabled the upgrade, let it break, and then I spent 5 minutes fixing the upgrade. Everything was fine after that. That was never my experience when I had to use Windows. It's like trying to start your carborated engine in the 80s. It's just a roll of the dice that things don't work with Windows.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    I installed Mint on my wife's computer last week, and we have had problems getting the printer to print, and then to scan. I've installed the manufacturer's driver a couple of times and it seems to do those functions okay, but some features still don't work.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    For what it's worth I have a printer that won't work on windows no matter what I do. But it just works on Linux, copy and scan with no effort on my part.

    It would seem weird it isn't supported, but also weird that you are trying to find manufacture drivers. Shouldn't be needed.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    What brand printer? What functions? Just wanted to know what to expect.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    It's a Brother B&W laser with integrated scanner. About 6 years old, so it should be fully supported. We can't view toner levels or scan from the printer (press a button on the printer to start a scan and have it automatically accepted by the computer. I have installed the separate driver for this functionality, but it isn't working).

    We haven't yet tried some features like double-sided printing.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Does it do scan to FTP? For my Brother MFC device, I spun up a write-only FTP server to drop scanned documents into a network share. That made them immediately accessible to any machine on my network.

    Shit just worked.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Seems printer drivers are amongst the worst. I had a brother inkjet printer/scanner combo a while back. Pretty much the same issues. Also what they call driver and offer on their website really sucks. Now I have one from Epson and that just pops up on Mint (and other distros) and I can print right away, no driver installation necessary. And it even started reporting toner levels after some update. Sadly I can't recommend the printer either, I had several other issues with the thing itself. But this kind of roulette with hardware is really annoying. And I believe it's really pronounced with those consumer printer/scanner combination devices. The expensive business printers regularly work way better, at least that's what I've seen.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I only use Linux for servers, Win11 desktop. I don't do any of this fooling around lemmy tells me I need to be doing constantly. Been a Windows admin for 15-years, same, rarely have to fiddle with anything. Same goes for the occasional Linux desktop.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 37 points 1 year ago

    my friends started saying "Linux moment" whenever I have an issue with anything so naturally insay "windows moment" every single time their game crashes or they "need to reinstall graphics drivers"

    oh no! it's [insert excuse] not windows!

  • source
  • [–] 35 points 1 year ago

    dude is salty after removing the French language pack

  • source
  • [–] 33 points 1 year ago

    When the copypasta it's so good people actually think you are stupid. Congratulations, this infuriated me even when I knew beforehand what it was. Peak writing. Please don't do it again, to much pasta.

  • source
  • [–] 30 points 1 year ago

    You’re not a developer.

    shit, don't tell my employer

  • source
  • [–] 27 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    My computer "accidentally" installed windows 11 yesterday. So I spent all of today trying to fix all the stuff that broke. In the end it didn't work, so I'm finally moving over to Linux soon.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [+] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago

    Funny, I'm trying to think of the amount of times my 8 year old daughter asked me to switch to windows because Linux has too many issues, and I've got nothing.

    The real copium is thinking Linux is poverty, just to feel good about windows.

    Quality copypasta!

  • source
  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago*

    It's oozing brainrot juice, freshly pumped out from the LinkedIn cesspit.

    Edit: also "high-performers" lol.

  • source
  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago

    Yeah because I never have random issues with windows, or updates, or compatibility with hardware. /S

  • source
  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Funny how you can SOUND like a person who doesn't wash his own underpants. And a white male in his late 30's. And a high-performer but on a razor narrow and specificaly capitalistic set of criteria.

    High quality copy-pasta

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    You lost me at "high-performers". Go back to LinkedIn with those mega-corp mouth-noises

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    Honestly, I actually save time using Linux compared to Windows. The problems that I had, have and will have are infinitely easier to solve (search engine -> Ctrl+C -> Ctrl-V), instead of reinstalling the whole damn OS (and every single application, game, file, and so on and so forth) whenever the tiniest thing breaks. I actually gain more time to live, because my hair isn't going white and falling out due to seeing AI slop, ads and cookie banners on my OS all the time.

  • source
  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Some people derive a great deal of pleasure from hand configuring their system to reflect all their ideals. For some people, it’s fun. Leave them alone and let the enjoy their computers.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago

    Funny. It had me up until paragraph 5 negated paragraph 3. When you can netinst Debian and do all the things in para 5 with iceweasel without doing a single compile or chore from para 3 it's a good reminder how far Linux has come in my lifetime. :)

  • source
  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago

    I love Linux. I read this rant. I still love Linux.

  • source
  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I have been using Linux since my mid-teens in the late 2000s (with interruptions). In the late 2000s and early 2010s I really did do a lot of tinkering with the computer, but nowadays I rarely even install new software and hardly ever think of my operating system, at all.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago*

    "High performers don't waste their time arguing with the void on social media. Congrats, you just burned the only free hour you had after work."

    Bro, you're literally just like those you despise. Talking of badges, don't prick yourself with that "Sheriff of Linux" badge you made it out that bottle lid.

    Edit: Sorry, where the hell did that link come from!? I swear it wasn't there when I last looked!

  • source
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    high-performers, high-output people, gtfo with this stupid shit.

  • source
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    I just use Debian and it's completely fine, I don't need to build an install from scratch or to compile the kernel. Just use linux.

  • source
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Want more time? Just buy it back guys.

  • source
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago
    [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Haha this is some good pasta.

  • source
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    I almost didn't notice the title.

  • source
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago
    [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    The guy never tried gnu/linux and thinks you need to compile it , dooooh just install and use it, i mean what is this baseless attack

  • source