Hacker News Reader

Comment by wolvoleo | Hacker News Reader

Why would I as a Linux user want windows users to switch? I don't. If many of them do, Linux will become more like windows to appease them, and also because there's more money in the masses.

View on HN

As long as Linux is fundamentally open, I don't see how Windows users switching over and popular distros becoming more like Windows is a negative thing, as the power users will still be there and have the ability to tune their systems however they like along with the benefit of more funding and software support. I think the ecosystem is too diverse and open-ended to have a tragedy of the commons.

Firefox already auto-selects the location bar when it gets focus, and refuses to even give the option not to do that. This is the sort of unwelcome behavior that can be forced on a community when a larger, less technical community merges with it. Overall, I do support Linux becoming the majority OS, but there will be some negative consequences.

Firefox is already on life support anyway. No normies no Firefox.

Linux is the "normie" open source system, while hobbyists who want to have things done their way use things like Haiku. Gatekeeping Linux is like gatekeeping Toyota Corolla.

There are almost no normies using desktop linux.

But I'm not gatekeeping it, just that I'm not a fan of the cheering around "linux on the desktop". If that happens it will no longer be what makes linux great.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com