Recently, the Linux community is making me very disappointed. It’s not because someone in Fedora decided to remove 32-bit libraries. It’s not because of my precious Wayland and freedesktop.org standards being stalled. But hang on, isn’t all of this just Linux drama? What impact does all of this have on me? Before we get into that, I want to analyze the anatomy of drama within Linux and open source communities.
The Right Target Audience
Before we address any particular juicy drama, let’s break down an important part of covering a story on the internet. I strongly prefer first party sources whenever possible. Reading is easy, but interpreting information isn’t, because interpretation is what we, as users, act upon this information.
Example of Following a News Trail
- You watch a clip from the WAN Show that mentions a lawsuit with Anthropic and Facebook involving copyright. Since Linus and his team don’t cite sources or show the articles they are reading, just trust them bro.
- You don’t trust them and use a search engine to find the article they are reading.
- The search takes you to a LA Times article by Lauren Harvey, which mentions the aforementioned court case with a link.
- The original document is from Publishers’ Weekly, who uploaded the full court case.
This is why I hate reading news.
How I Read Linux News
For example, let’s say we’re covering a new release of software like OBS Studio’s (as of time of writing) recent 31.0.4 hotfix release.
- Simply analyzing the patch notes is far too overwhelming unless you know what to look for, but it’s helpful for those who are actively developing projects around OBS.
- We could analyze the end product by opening OBS prior to the update, but it looks visually similar to the last release.
Since these ways don’t work, we need to resort to interpretation and as your resident content creator, I can at least authoritatively say some highlights for OBS on Linux as I have experienced them. I have no proof since I updated to record this video, but I will link to issues to reference them.
First, there was a regression in previous versions of OBS on Linux where enabling the virtual webcam didn’t work. Unfortunately, I need the virtual webcam to show people my lovely face otherwise people are quite literally interacting with a disembodied voice. Stephematician, one of the programmers for OBS and v4l2loopback, also apologized (probably not necessary).
The reason I made the social post was because it’s an ongoing issue that people who use OBS need to be aware of, the issue is known, and being addressed. As a content creator, even though there are tens of thousands of creators larger than me, it’s my responsibility for what I say, whether it’s accurate or not, and what my audience chooses to do with this information.
Mailing Lists and Mediums
On a similar note, it’s a wonder to me that so many people are obsessed with the Linux kernel mailing list. First, there’s nothing exciting there unless someone is trying to support a specific type of hardware like the new Intel or AMD processor. Then we move on with our lives and wish everyone the best.
Every time someone brings up the Linux kernel mailing list or virtually anything involving Linus Torvalds, I can’t help but feel creepy reading it. First, Linus strikes me as an engineering type, yet is forced on stage to talk about silly things like leadership or interview people he barely knows. He never signed up for all this attention yet online Linux outlets obsess over him.
Second, mailing lists are emails–personal correspondences that just happen to be made public. A similar analogy is how Charles Dickens wrote his stories. Many of them were serialized in newspapers or pamphlets, long before they were published in the book form his readers or we read them today.
Do you think Torvalds or Kent Overstreet intended for anybody outside of their email chain to read their emails? I don’t see my email in the mailing list, your email probably isn’t in there, so it must not be relevant to my life or yours, because they didn’t bother to address us or release a statement on social media.
Would you enjoy if I read through your emails? Probably not. This is because a key way to identify if something is “drama” or not, think about how people are addressing each other. Email is a very different form of communication from using a public social media like Mastodon or Bluesky. Because of the medium, in my humble opinion, mailing lists like the Linux kernel, Gentoo, or Debian is not worth our time because end users are not the target audience.
The instance of the electric light may prove illuminating in this connection. The electric light is pure information. It is a medium without a message, as it were, unless it is used to spell out some verbal ad or name. This fact, characteristic of all media, means that the “content” of any medium is always another medium. The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph. If it is asked, “What is the content of speech?,” it is necessary to say, “It is an actual process of thought, which is in itself nonverbal.” An abstract painting represents direct manifestation of creative thought processes as they might appear in computer designs. What we are considering here, however, are the psychic and social consequences of the designs or patterns as they amplify or accelerate existing processes. For the “message” of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. The railway did not introduce movement or transportation or wheel or road into human society, but it accelerated and enlarged the scale of previous human functions, creating totally new kinds of cities and new kinds of work and leisure.
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
Project Politics, Processes, and Proposals
The next thing to discuss is project politics. This isn’t so much about politically right or left as much it is about project governance. Typically, when a project wants to make sweeping changes, the standard thing to do is fly it by their main contributors so they are aware of the changes that are being made. An example of this is GNOME’s recent deprecation of X11 and the login manager GDM. GNOME’s release manager Jordan puts up a GitLab issue and everybody responds if they are ready to go or not.
Recently a more extreme version of this was a change proposal to Fedora created by members of Fedora’s infrastructure team. Among them, Fabio Valentini made the suggestion that Fedora should stop packaging and maintaining 32-bit libraries within 2 years as it’s aging architecture that is a struggle for programmers to manage. Returning to the target audience, developers within Fedora’s ecosystem are the primary addressees.
Who aren’t being addressed are users and unfortunately, this news was not taken well. Removing 32-bit applications caused breakages for Steam and the most oppressed group of all, gamers, lost their collective minds. A particular quote the “users” who opposed this was from Kyle Gospodnetich, the lead developer of Bazzite. He initially made a post in the Fedora Discourse, which many perceived as trying to stop the proposal because of the detrimental effect of Bazzite.
Instead, many people tunnel-visioned on the harms it would do to downstream Fedora projects and ignored the overall message of developer fatigue. What’s worse is online outlets and content creators drummed up this as some catastrophic thing that would happen. The whole thing got so much attention toxicity was sent to Fabio on Fedora’s forums and Kyle had to go on tour debunking claims. In fact, Kyle said he was in favor of this proposal; he just felt it was too premature.
My initial proposition was to actually close that proposal and reopen it because I felt the wording of it was going to ring alarm bells and result in bad press. Which, you know, it did, but… It happens sometimes, you know, people take things out of context or report things too early.
Gardiner Bryant’s The whole truth about Fedora’s 32-bit proposal w/ Kyle from Bazzite 4:00
Block Progress or Brigade?
The Fedora 32-bit fiasco is only touching the surface because when does online discussion impede development effort? One such individual is Sebastian Wick, who helps maintain Mutter, GDM, Flatpak, and countless other things we take for granted on desktop Linux.
One things that some trolls online focus on is Sebastian’s work with Wayland and standards discussions with desktop Linux. Protocol discussions like Wayland and freedesktop.org standards already fails the qualifications from before: the target audience is for developers and users aren’t meant to browse issue pages. What’s more Sebastian is often painted as the reason many protocols have come to a halt and inhibiting progress.
Creators are also guilty of galvanizing this kind of behavior, even if unintentionally.
I will remind everyone users are not the primary audience and discussions between developers are not our business, especially when interactions may happen outside of these channels like Discord, Matrix, or social media. As an “alternative reading” to appease Linux losers, let me offer a couple thoughts.
First, who are we as users to define what is important for a protocol or standard? Standards are very serious things and making definitive decisions can have serious impact on all desktop Linux projects going forward. Things like the standard XDG folders are an example of this. These things need to be picked apart and deliberated carefully because somebody has to keep them in shape not just immediately, but in the years to come. If people aren’t willing to step up and help run the show, why should the same people be allowed to decide what happens?
Second, Sebastian in particular has been sent multiple disparaging comments and frequently labelled as a troll. Sebastian put HDR in GNOME, maintains Flatpak’s sandbox/compatibility, and helps run GDM, which Linux losers ironically label the most reliable and stable login manager. Give him a break! What are you doing for Linux today?
Let’s consider this: if people will spread discourse like what we saw with the Fedora 32-bit libraries and with threats being sent out to project leaders, it’s no wonder why Linux users are held in such low regard. I frequently get told I’m destroying the Linux community on a regular basis, but this is far worse than whatever people think I’m doing.
The Consequences
These people who send threats and spread false information are wasting the time of developers who could be doing better things with their time. Instead, they have to spend their time combating trolls, putting out PR fires, or get demoralized online (and hopefully not real world harm!). This also has tangible consequences when literal governments pay money to get things in Linux and that precious money and developer time was wasted because somebody happened to create a conspiracy from a GitLab.
It’s the Linux losers who have not only effectively ruined online discourse, but hinder progress by beefing up the most minor of events of creating all kinds of speculation.
It’s the chase for daily content, which leads to junk articles and applications that need more time to cook in the oven before people use them.
It’s the people who shout and complain on social media in hopes of change, but the only thing that gets accomplished is wasting valuable volunteer hours for a developer who ultimately isn’t getting paid and locked in for life. It’s a disease rampant in online Linux communities and it desperately needs an Echinacea.
I want to end with 4 questions that will easily determine if something is worth your time as a Linux user:
- Does it affect me or a loved one whose computer I touched?
- Does it build awareness and is there a call to action?
- Does it have the potential to cause speculation or construed as spreading FUD?
- What can we do to counteract harm (if any)? Shouting on social media doesn’t count!
That is how you identify Linux drama and why most Linux “news” for that matter isn’t worth your time. You don’t control what happens in other people’s lives, but you can control what happens in your life. Not what is Bobby the fraud who runs the Linuxiac going to do? What are you going to do?
The only thing I did as a creator was to bring this to your attention and unfortunately I don’t have an answer. I can do one thing and it’s shame this kind of behavior. Ask the actual people involved before you go post on Reddit and I have a zero tolerance for this behavior online. If I see this in any of my socials, I will absolutely make fun of you. Shame on you for ruining Linux for the rest of us.
Video References:
In order of appearance.
- The mind behind Linux - TED
- Linus Torvalds On Future Of Desktop Linux
- Keynote: Linus Torvalds in Conversation with Dirk Hohndel
- Pat Gelsinger and Linus Torvalds talk Linux, open source, technology and more - Intel Newsroom
- Google I/O ‘25 Keynote