I got tired of everything taking so much effort. I was almost always able to eventually wrangle what I wanted out of the OS, but every change I wanted to make and thing I wanted to try needed so much searching and learning. I wanted stuff that just worked, even if it was "dumber."
That, and some parts of the community I ran into were really prickly. One that was especially memorable: I was asking for help on a big-ish project with a lot of followers and helpers and didn't expect the lead dev to answer my question, but when he did, he felt the need to make a snide as hell comment about how I have no business being there if I'm going to forget to start a service. On top of the exhaustion I was already feeling, I had a massive moment of "okay my guy, I guess I'll just fucking leave then."
Anyway, it just feels better being a poweruser on windows. I know enough to keep it clean, safe, and slim (like using powershell to disable the bits they don't expose to a settings UI, for example) -- to truly admin my machine -- without having to work so hard for it day in and day out.
Yikes, that is why I hate tech forums. Too many times I’ve asked an informed/thought out question I’m unable to find via search and the first replier basically says “hey go FUCK yourself.”
Unfortunately, those kinds of interactions are inevitable when the developer/user relationship is so close. And it goes both ways. I saw a thread just yesterday where a user reported an issue on github, a second user said they saw it too. Later the first user posted a workaround to the issue, and the second user came back with "took you long enough", and that was the end of the exchange.
Some people in the world are just dicks, but that doesn't mean we should reject interacting with everyone. Similarly, a community of user-maintained software is going to have some asshats, but that doesn't mean we should hand our computing freedom over to one or two corporations. Just my two cents.
Some people in the world are just dicks, but that doesn’t mean we should reject interacting with everyone.
Corollary: Your personal aversion to corporations doesn't mean users have have any motivation or obligation to keep trying when we're getting pushback from both the software and those who maintain it.
Anyway, I'm not sure how you got that I reject interacting with everyone after my experience, but extrapolating my statement to that kind of extreme phrasing sure doesn't fill me with confidence about future interactions, either.
Hey there, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I'm not discounting anything you're saying, I agree that it's definitely a very real phenomenon, and didn't intend to provoke a defensive response. I didn't say that you were "rejecting interacting with everyone", on the contrary, I'm saying that in the physical world you deal with people who act like dicks, but you specifically DON'T reject interacting with everyone. I'm drawing a parallel between that behavior in the physical world with how I believe we should also behave in the digital one.
I also did not say that I have any personal aversion to corporations, I owe most of my daily comforts to corporations, so I would be a hypocrite to say as much. But if I had said that "I don't think we should stick our hands in blenders" that doesn't mean I have a personal aversion to blenders.
I still can't really agree that the comparison holds; we try harder in real life because the bar for being a dick is (usually) higher. On the internet, when all it takes is a few easy sentences to be a dick to a faceless stranger whose reaction we don't have to see... to me, the response should be equally fluid, else we get bogged down being the only one putting in the effort and taking a constant beating to our self-esteem when we wonder why no one is bothering to hear us.
However, I appreciate you being chill about clearing up what you meant. I did initially miss the comparison you were going for and feel like I was getting cereal box therapy about not cutting people off (and thus staying in toxic communities) when that wasn't what you meant.
I hear you, perhaps there is a fundamental difference there with the digital world.
I really want to see some linux distro get to the point that users don't have to wonder if something has gone horribly wrong for them. As much as I do disapprove of some of Apple's repairability policies, and as much of a toxic human being Jobs was, Steve Jobs really was a visionary. He saw that if you paid attention to detail, you could turn a computer into something that "just worked" for people who weren't tech savvy. Until that point, it was engineers selling to other engineers, they just couldn't see the potential that technology had. As far as I can tell, the linux world has never had someone with such a relentless vision for user experience. I personally think it's because the opportunity for profit just isn't there, or at least no one sees it.
But there was a time when buying a windows license meant you got a copy of windows and that was it; now no matter what you do it's full of ads and telemetry and constant popups about new features you never asked for. I would gladly pay the price of a windows license for a linux distro that was as thought out and usable as an Apple or Windows product in their prime, and maybe we're entering a window (no pun intended) of time where that's finally possible.
Currently my experience with 3D printing. It's one thing after another, and the community, at least on Reddit and Facebook, fucking sucks. If I ask a question, it's always "hey how about you go fuck yourself" or an essay that has zero relevance to what I'm asking. Made a post on Reddit the other day (I know, but have a single burner account until the 3D printing community here takes off more) and just asked to see some settings due to just constantly having issue after issue. Half of the responses were people just telling me they're not fucking wizards and they need to know what kind of problems I'm having. I... didn't ask for that whatsoever. I very explicitly just asked for someone's slicer settings to compare to.
That's absolutely the worst help forum experience, when you're asking one question but everyone extrapolates the question they think you REALLY meant to ask and talks down to you about it.
And of course if you try to steer the conversation back to your actual question, you get painted as the unreasonable one placing all sorts of conditions on the generous free help others are allowed to bestow upon you.
The less reliance on others Linux requires, the better off it will be for general adoption.
Haha your second paragraph sums it up perfectly. A few folks did share their settings, but they were for completely different printers/hardware haha. Most of the online guides I've found are written under the assumption that you're already a master at the hobby, and it's strangely spread out in random little nooks of the internet - there's not really a ton of centralized discussion forums. Maybe the hobby is way smaller than I thought, or maybe I'm just in way over my head, but I fix tech problems for a living - did not expect this to be as much of a challenge. Never buy a 3D printer if you value your sanity and living stress-free. Sorry, I just needed to rant for a minute haha.
Yeah 3D printers are fussier than I expected. Especially when printing anything involving supports and more specifically... small areas that need supports. I print a lot of stuff for D&D and have just started cutting things up into pieces with blender to print easier, then glue it together
I will say. My first thought was obviously to ask what what printer, to see if I could send you my profile for you to compare (depending on the soccer you use). Then my second was to ask if you're having issues and if so, what the issues are.
Only because sometimes a seemingly large issue could be a very small fix.
When I first started, I got it working great and then out of no where nothing would stick to the bed. I spent more time than I'd like to admit messing with settings only to realize it was the oils on my hands causing adhesion issues. Some 99% IPA fixed all my issues real quick haha.
That would be awesome! I've got an Ender 6 with a Micro Swiss NG extruder. I was printing decently with the stock hardware, but that stock extruder was a nightmare and kept slipping or completely losing grip on filament mid-print, so I upgraded to this extruder. Now I'm just trying to find that perfect spot to where it extrudes but doesn't grind filament. I've been having some really messy prints.
I just had a feeler gauge arrive in the mail, so I'm about to use that to try leveling the bed more accurately. Everyone says to just use a piece of paper or something, but different paper is different widths haha.
I do have a PEI bed, so stuff sticks and comes off way easier now, but I would love to check out your slicer settings to get a good baseline! What kind of hardware do you have, and which slicer do you use?
Just using that outright probably won't work. What I would do is load up the default Ender 6 profile that Cura has, and then adjust settings based on mine. For instance. You went from a bowden extruder to a direct drive. So you can probably copy my retraction settings as a baseline and adjust from there. You need far less retraction on direct drive extruders (i.e. 0.2mm-1mm for direct drive vs 5mm-8mm for bowden).
I would also look up CHEP and Teaching Tech on youtube. They have great videos on bed leveling and everything else related to 3d printing.
Most of the online guides I've found are written under the assumption that you're already a master at the hobby
I've had exactly the opposite experience lol. Most of the stuff out there is dreadfully basic, and if you want detail like scientific comparisons of the strength-weight ratios of different infill patterns, good fuckin luck. Some chum on YouTube will have some half baked experiments and that's as good as it gets.
everyone extrapolates the question they think you REALLY meant to ask and talks down to you about it
It's true, but the "X-Y problem" is real.
The question may be "what's the best way to do X", when they actually want to do Y and they concluded, erroneously, that X is the best way to do it. Responders suspect this, so they want to steer the questioner to a best explanation to find out if that's the case, just to watch the questioner's tantrum when the immediate answer is not what they expect.
Speaking only for myself, if I want to know the best way to do Y, I ask about how I can do Y. If I'm at the stage where I've moved on to asking about how to do X, there's a reason I want to approach the problem that specific way -- personal preference, limitations of my setup, learning a new approach, whatever else -- and I'm not there to get into some asinine argument defending my choice, I'm there to find out how to do X.
So while I'm well aware of the thought process behind it, I will never not find it incredibly disrespectful to disregard the question being asked in order to make snarky little guesses at intent and answer a totally different question.
The standard "come prepared with a good question" is simply not as hard for a savvy user to meet as you're making it out; certainly it's far easier than scrying between the lines and derailing the topic on purpose, and it strikes me as arrogant that anyone would trust their own attempts at mind-reading more than the clear words on the page. I've got a very good idea why you're taking this all so personally that you're replying to it three weeks after any of it was active.
Well, at least the very fact that you're taking it personally means it dug deep enough that you're aware it's a problem, even if you still have a bit of a journey before you accept it needs a change.
I was trying to run my own personal-use instance of LiveJournal back 20 years ago when it was open source (and not owned by Russia). Just to see if I could, as is the spirit of a tinkerer.
There was a handful of paid staff as well as a bunch of enthusiastic volunteers, so I expected one of them to answer a low-priority newbie support request, not.. what I got.
You're not wrong, but running Linux directly correlates to more time spent on "tech forums in general," so it's still a bigger problem with that OS than others imo.