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
“It Gives Great Demo”
There’s that famous video of Steve Jobs explaining why they don’t didn’t make touchscreen MacBooks: We thought about [a touch screen MacBook] years ago. We’ve done tons of user testing on this and it turns out it doesn’t work! Touch surfaces don’t want to...
via Jim Nielsen’s Blog November 4, 2026On the road for 8 months: Retrospective
My Trip around the world is now almost 8 months-in. Crazy to look back at the times and all the (36!) Countries I’ve visited, sometimes a day, sometimes almost 2-months! I have now turned 26, and am writing this blog on a phone in a café in Warsaw, Poland....
via Junwoo Hwang November 4, 2026The Trump Era is Collapsing and Big Tech is Officially On Notice
Cycles Hyped No More on November 4, 2026 The American electorate has spoken. And it’s not just MAGA Trumpism which has been repudiated, but the unseemly reign of douchebag techbroism. Cycles Hyped No More is a monthly column by Jared White where he takes a...
via The Internet Review November 4, 2026Generated by openring