An Ode to Linux Desktop Users Everywhere
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels. The package makers, the man page writers. The rounded windows in Qt mixed with the less rounded windows of GTK. The ones who literally see things differently because of missing proprietary fonts.
They’re not fond of rules, installation wizards, double clicking and have no respect for the status quo.
You can downvote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you cannot do is ignore them. Because they ship your bug fixes.
They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty screen and know that you have to blacklist your video card driver? Or sit in silence while tweaking alsamixer on the command line? Or write bash aliases to reload your network driver kernel module each time your laptop resumes from suspension? We make tools for these kinds of people.
While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because people who are crazy enough to think that they can run Linux on the desktop, are the ones who change the world.
Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
Most popular posts this month
- One Year of Foxglove
- SQLite DB Migrations with PRAGMA user_version
- Lev Lazinskiy
- Microblog
- Vagrant Box for ROS2 on Apple Silicon
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- The contagion of fear from The Observation Deck
- The revolt of the reader from The Observation Deck
- Deeper dive: Were Touch Bar’s problems software rather than hardware? from Unsung
- Joining Cursor from Fatih Arslan
- Pluralistic: Digital sewer socialism (08 Aug 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Pluralistic: Enshittification and Reverse Centaurs go global (29 Jul 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making from Ludicity
- The default person from https://popagandhi.com/
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
“But, as we all know, the individual light bulbs are not moving.”
I linked to palette cycling before, and I was just reminded of palette cycling art by Mark Ferrari, who back in the 1990s made 30+ landscapes that looked like this: They have been collected on this webpage some 15 years ago, and I’m linking to it in part b...
via Unsung September 15, 2026Humanity’s Flight 93 Moment
It’s time to ban smart machines making smarter machines
via The Intrinsic Perspective September 15, 2026Pluralistic: Everybody pees (15 Sep 2026)
Today's links Everybody pees: Even Jeff Bezos. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Zune won't play Microsoft files; Papercraft 1:1 Mustang; Third gender for Aussie passports; France hacked Canada; EC v links; Welcome to Night Vale;...
via Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow September 15, 2026Generated by openring