Alt text: O’RLY? generated book cover with a donkey, navy blue accent, header: “It’s only free if you don’t value your time”, title: “Handling Arch Linux Failures”, subtitle: “Mom, please cancel my today’s agenda!”
The thing I hate about the “value your time” argument is that windows is shit.
Let’s be generous for a minute and assume that windows and linux have the same amount of problems. Someone who is on windows for the past 30 years has 30 years of acquired knowledge and will probably know quickly how to solve it on windows, but not linux. Someone who is on linux for the past 30 years has 30 years of acquired knowledge and will probably know quickly how to solve it on linux, but not windows.
So the entire argument is just “but I have muscle memory tied to windows, and I already know how to solve those problems, but I dont know how to solve the linux ones, so they take me a lot of research and time to solve, therefore all linux problems always take a lot more time to solve”
On windows, I have to spend time fighting BSODs and finding out where to download software from that isn’t just bloated up with viruses, and how to run registry hacks to get rid of start menu ads and to stop microsoft from phoning home. None of those things i have to do on linux.
On linux, today my biggest issue was figuring out how to change the keybinding for taking a screenshot… And that was an easy issue, but it’s also not even possible on windows.
So I guess different types of problems. My “wasted” time is customizing my OS/environment so it works the way I want it to, not trying to fight back any ounce of control.
Linux is also way more helpful when troubleshooting imo. There’s usually an easy to find log with a helpful error message. Windows is just “Shit didn’t work. (0xGOFUCKYOURSELF).”
my rant was not about your meme. But people actually use this argument seriously, and that frustrates me.
And I will admit that learning a new system has a time cost, but once you reach experience parity, the time cost per problem is less, and the number of problems is less. In that way, the “time spent” is an investment rather than wasted.
So A+ meme, it triggered me in all the ways it was supposed to.
