@NEETzsche @Cookieman @childrapist1488 @lina @Looming @fedilist @mint

> Appeals to the technical advantages of fedi/linux just aren't going to measure up to the network effect in the mind of anybody without a bachelors in computer science.

If that were the case, then I would get to have far more technical conversations than I have now. Just go look at Poast if you want to see.

Even if it were true, it would be fine with me: I'm trying to use something I like rather than use something that other people like. Technological evangelism is not something I've ever been interested in. In my case, it's much simpler: if I don't want to talk to vegetarians, I can hang out at a steakhouse.

I understand your problem, and that you'd like to get your tabletop friends off of the shitty services and onto here, but of course they aren't interested in the place based on the technical merits: either it gives them something they want or it doesn't. You can add the thing they want, it's open, but it's not a matter of how to sell it.

As far as Linux adoption goes, I don't think we are starting with the same fundamental suppositions. I want a C compiler: do I care if normies want a C compiler when I decide what OS to use?

When nobody really "got" Linux, that was fine with me: I didn't need them to understand Linux to be able to use Linux. So people would ask why I bothered with Linux and I could speak broadly or specifically about the capabilities, and then they'd either understand or not, and if they understood, either they'd be interested or it became obvious that we wanted different things from an operating system. It only really bothered me if they were persistent about trying to get me to abandon my heresy, and they either didn't understand or didn't think I should want to do the things I wanted to do. (Same thing nowadays with Plan 9: not many people understand it and most people don't care about it and that is fine with me, I can still use it. I'm happy to talk about it but I don't want to convert anyone that's not interested and it's annoying when people can't recognize that and move on.)

So, fedi, we're all here. I'd rather focus on doing things that are good for the people that are here (which obviously includes me) than to get more people here. I saw what "get more normies here" did to Linux. No, thank you: no good software resulted from that, and it never made normies start using Linux. There was a lot of "You picked this software because of your values and your taste and you must now discard both of those in order to get people that don't share your values to use the software" and fuck that completely. Some people that didn't like Linux hopped on because they were interested in the Raspberry Pi. What actually got them to use Linux was the Android phone: that is what you get if you successfully make a Linux that normies will use, and it's something I won't touch.
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