TL:DR; Reluctant to switch distros because of toxic member - Rude and unhelpful to newbies - Prevents people from participating and makes other users willing to help uncomfortable - Management and moderators have done nothing to address the issue
Sorry if the post is a little confusing. English isn’t my first language. Normally, I don’t do posts like these. I’m a package maintainer for the same distro, just a newbie, but yes, I’ve published a few apps with the help of kind app devs, who were happy with giving their own time to spare, to improve the aforementioned distro. I’m sick of it. I’ve had enough tolerating this, because this is one of the worst four to five months of experiences I’ve ever had, and I’m contemplating switching the distro that I’m using.
After that changes that Red Hat undertook, and the direction of Fedora, I decided that it was finally the time I switch to a community-based distro. This distro I chose is what most people would call the Arch of 2023, I’d say. This new distro is a niche, and one-of-a-kind, but it’s very popular, because it’s a valid research project of utmost importance.
Little did I know that one person, could ruin my entire opinion about a community as being the most horrible, unwelcoming, unsafe and unkind place I’ve ever seen. I’ve faced rude people from Mint, Debian, Fedora and the likes, but this person is the epitome of “asshole”. Let me explain why.
The “asshole” in my case is a senior “elitist” maintainer - the stereotypical problem everyone complains about, whom I’ve had the misfortune of meeting. Let’s call them person X. They behave just like the stack-overflow “elitist”. Also, they maintain the most important part of the particular distro I’m using. Are they knowledgeable? Yes. Can they solve most of the issues? Probably. Their responses are almost, always baits actually, to make you lose your composure and to also discourage/prevent others from participating and helping. The first part, I’m okay with, because I’ve always been able to maintain my calm. But the second, not at all.
X is active almost all of the time. Now, that you’d think is a really reliable person you’d say. Except that they’re not. X gives answers to people, and that answer depends on his personal feelings, and a bunch of other personal bias. If it’s a technical subject, you’d see X discuss about that. If it’s a project X does not like, X would say that this project should be thrown out of the repository. If there’s a newbie question, or a question about personal inconveniences in a distro, X will lose their shit.
X has previously replied to me, and a bunch of countless other people in a rude manner. About how it started for me, well, that was the first comment I’ve even posted on their chat server about how a certain file was corrupted, and what do I get? Angry comments asking me to explain everything in detail. Well, I never asked for a fix, because the fix was literally to wait for some time and download the newly generated file with newer timestamp. The worst first impression I’ve had about a community, but I convinced myself that I mustn’t be too judgy. As any respectable person would do, I did not reply to X, I did not comment anything about them being an “asshole”. Simply ignored them, and in this case, thankfully, a kind fellow gave me some directions.
I’ve been using this distro for about five to six months, I’d say. I’d ask a question, I’d get rude replies from X, and in rare circumstances, X would give proper reply or just wouldn’t respond, which is way better than listening to angry comments.
Well, today, I asked a simple question about the experimental stuff used in the distro. I got a really rude answer, with personal opinions I’ve not asked. Again, I did not respond. But I was really furious. I wanted to reply something rude and hurtful back. But I did not.
Why exactly am I so done with this community? Because:
- X has created a hostile environment for newbie users, who are genuinely looking for help, and this distro is very much undocumented, which means that you’re basically asking answers from a spiked wall
- When X replies, other user don’t help the one asking for assistance in fear of being judged for having some opinion
- X has enjoyed this power trip for quite some time, and the management, the overall team, especially the moderators have done nothing in their power to make the chat room a safe space. Granted, I did not inform that mods, so part of it is on me. But this person is an active participant, and by active, I mean, they’re online all the time, and they respond, and so this pattern is visible to everyone.
So basically, neither was my query answered, I had my mood ruined, and no one else wants to on the fear of being judged. So what if they’re a senior maintainer? Are we allowing bad actors now? People who make community that are against the principles of inclusivity and diversity? Are we now encouraging toxic and hostile eco-chambers filled with a bunch of Linux-bros, because newbies can’t stand next to you?
I don’t switch distro often, because I am very loyal to a particular distro for years, and besides, in my opinion, it’s pointless to change distros unless there’s a reason to. But this, I’ve had enough of this shit. I just feel like changing.
EDIT: I was thinking of a different distro than OP’s
I think I know which distro you reference (are we keeping it a secret for good reason?). If it’s the one I’m thinking of, I’ve also reached out to admins about toxic messaging in the forums, and the response was hostile, dismissive, and disappointing.
Unfortunately, despite being interested in some technical aspects of the distro, I doubt the sanity of some of the team, and don’t want to deal with their hostility either.
I’d be interested to know what distro this is so I can avoid it, tbh. I understand the impulse to avoid stirring up shit by naming names, though.
I’m not sure if Andy got it right, but it’s NixOS. I’m going to be taking a break from contributions anyway, there were a few pending PRs left for a library, but maybe I’ll address it next month.
Ok I figured out how to send a direct message in the Lemmy app I’m using.
It’s Puppy, isn’t it. I always knew they were up to no good.
You may be joking but I gotta say for everyone else: no, it’s not Puppy!
From the description to me sound probably like nixos
Yes, you got the distro right. Getting a job isn’t easy in a populous country, and as a graduate, it is really stressful. Open source contribution is what I enjoy to make myself feel busy and not have negative thoughts, while I keep hearing rejection from recruiters. And just having another toxic person ruin the experience for me is just disheartening.
Yes I’m contributor too, not on distros tho, even tho I have tried to contribute to mint some time ago, never had a bad experience with contributions and trust I have made many many mistakes while trying to contribute, maybe it’s better if you don’t find the environment to be good for you to just contribute to something else that at least isn’t uncomfortable and isn’t discouraging, yes I know the problem shouldn’t have existed to begin with but we can’t do much about it if they don’t even acknowledge the problem.
It’s funny and sad that we all have stories like these with so many different projects.
I was wrong, my experience was not with the same project as OP (not Nix OS in my case).
Honestly sounds like my experience with VOID Linux. I just stick to Arch now.
I’m sorry to hear that! VOID is not what I had in mind.
Asahi?
No, never had any experience with Asahi, positive or negative.