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.
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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
“From digital mischief to outright destruction”
The 1980s and 1990s PC viruses were a special breed. The MS-DOS operating system wasn’t particularly secure – few home computer operating systems were back then – so viruses could spread quickly, and many did. Some of the viruses focused more on actually w...
via Unsung November 11, 2026The villa of Ormen
As a child, I was never a fan of any actor or singer. David Bowie is the closest thing to a “music idol” I’ve ever had. I never had a poster of him on my wall, or a T-shirt with his face on it, but he was a constant presence in my playlists, to the point w...
via Personal Site of Andrei N. Ciobanu November 11, 2026Candidate Statement for the 2026 W3C TAG Election
Group photo of the W3C TAG in July 2022 with me to the left of Sir Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Web and TAG chair emeritus). Photo credit: Dan Appelquist I had the great honor of being elected to the TAG by the W3C membership in 2020 and again in 2022,...
via Lea Verou’s blog November 11, 2026Generated by openring