Comments by "Winnetou17" (@Winnetou17) on "The Right Mindset For Growing As A Linux User" video.

  1. While I agree on general with the video's ideas, I don't fully agree with the argumentation, and I want to challenge or maybe add to some things presented here. I mean, on the "getting stuck" vs "learning new stuff, like distros, DEs etc" - at which point learning another thing which is kind of the same of what you already know and barely (if any) brings anything new to the table is actually worthwhile ? What I mean is, having the growth mindset is important, but only on the personal "global" level. Meaning, a person should always have a growth and learning mindset, but the focus and topics can (and in most cases should) change over time. Which means that there are many legitimate cases and reasons when you simply want that something you learn or learnt to stay the same, so you can still be proeficient in it, and still can rely on it, so you can the focus on SOMETHING ELSE. While using what you learnt just as a tool with 0 more investment on learning about it or very similar alternatives. Distros and DEs and so on are a perfect example of this, where, after you tried several and know what each is about and what you like most, yeah, not wanting to know about any other distro or DE (unless something truly revolutionary appears) is a perfectly legitimate mindset, when you want to now focus on learning something totally different. "Hey, did you see that new KDE hammer ? It has a nice glossy look. Do you want to learn how to use it and maintain it so the gloss doesn't wear off ?" "No, I like my Gnome hammer just fine, I don't care about that stupid glossy look" "Duuude, wth, why are you so stuck in the past ? You need to have a growth mindset, otherwise your mind will rot" It's like being in the 8th grade and having learnt to do quadratic equations, you keep searching and finding all the possible quadratic equations and challenge yourself to solve them. Yeah, it's good to do it for a while, so you know them by heart, but if you keep focusing just on them, you won't learn what integrals are and group theory and so on. I'd say that checking new distros and DEs (again, after you tried a good bunch of them and know what they're about) is analogous with this. After a while, simply trying new stuff that is fundamentally the same you did before is not so different to jerking off. You get a sense of acomplishment, but you haven't really advanced. There's also something: in my case I do have changes and updates anxiety of some sorts. I know, maybe I'm too much in the mind-rotten-cannot-accept-change-does-not-challange-himself territory. Thing is, I like perfectioning things. I like optimising things. Using a program and see it do things faster and changing it so I can have one less click in a workflow that I use rather often. So, for this, I do like the peace of mind of checking the "market", selecting what I think is the best (be it a distro, desktop environment or window manager, shell interpreter, text editor, video editor, audio editor, video player, audio player, browser etc) and sticking to it, and start optimising it. Usually through configs, then plugings then maybe even patches or actual code changes done by me. And if everybody starts using another program because a new one looks nicer and is new and has 2 more features, then I get very... sad and ... I don't know anxious or nervous ? I mean, if you look at it, the old program can be rather simply upgraded to have those 2 more features and its looks can be configured to look almost the same as good... but people don't care. Then some big company or group decides that what they do will only work on this new program, because they like it, so you can't use the old program, at least not without massive pain. So at that point you're like... "great, basically now I wasted a lot of hours and I have to switch to another program" which, bar that new feature, is strictly inferior because it's slower and you need more clicks to do your thing. Of course you can learn this new program too and change it to your hearts delight. When you get to the same optimisation as you had on the older one BAM another new program to do the same thing, only (ever so slightly) different. And the history repeats. There's the UNIX philosophy that each program should do one thing only and do it well. It's exactly for this reason: so you only learn it once. When you don't have to relearn the same things over and over again, because they got changed, you can then start building bigger things. No, I don't regularly check and learn new letters, digits, screwdrivers, hammers, pencils and so on. So, yes, I would like to stay on Gentoo for 20 years, preferably 100 if I live that long and something better doesn't appear. Same with other apps. Not because I gave up on the growth mindset, but because I want to learn about other stuff now, like driver programming, electrical engineering, plant farming, the french language and so on. No, I couldn't care less right now about the new Arch spinoff. And I think that's totally fine. Lastly @DT I have a genuine challange. Since you said recently that you actually didn't used Windows at all in more than a decade, I have this challenge for you: actually try Windows and MacOS and note at least 5 good things about them each (and not stupid things like "it's good because it's popular" or "the rounded corners are really nice". Actual good stuff). This isn't a "ha, got you with your own words" kind of thing. After this long of time, you might not be aware of what the others did and might not know exactly where Linux stands. Trying them, Windows and MacOS should give you good insights of some things that Linux could improve upon. And it might make you like Linux more. Errr, GNU/Linux, my apologies.
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