Post by @Wfh@lemmy.zip

2026-10-13 17:48 UTC

Am in tech. Surrounded by tech people. Front devs, back devs, data engineers, data scientists and analysts, IT techs… They know windows. They know macOS as an “easier alternative for normies”. Some of them even prefer it because it’s “easy”. A few of them even know there’s a terminal somewhere, but wouldn’t git commit from the command line even if their life depended on it. A lot of them have heard of Linux, in a distant and nebulous way. Most of them still believe that Linux is confined to the server space or a weird dev environment inside WSL because you’re developing for servers, that you can’t daily drive Linux as a desktop, or that you can’t game on Linux. None of them would consider switching even if they spend their day complaining about how shitty windows is. This is true for about 95% of the tech people I interact with btw. Big tech psyop is real.

Replies (7)

@eager_eagle@lemmy.world 2026-10-13 18:28

I wouldn’t take a developer who can’t write got commit from command line seriously

Open ##5016785
@Tiger@sh.itjust.works 2026-10-13 21:03

That’s kind of an astounding anecdotal batch of experience, you sure more of those folks don’t know Linux better?

Open ##5019714
@SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 2026-10-13 23:16

They know macOS as an “easier alternative for normies” Questionable amount of knowledge for techies if they aren’t aware that MacOS has a nearly full-blown FreeBSD inside. There’s a sorta-famous photo from CERN, from early 2010s, with a room full of people who work there, all with Macbooks. A dude I know went to CERN sometimes for his university, and came to me with a question of why he’s seen so many Macs there. I explained that it’s a Unix but with a GUI made for people.

Open ##5021024
@chunes@lemmy.world 2026-10-14 02:18

wtf

Open ##5024146
@Axolotl_cpp@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-10-14 04:54

Yep, i can confirm this, many programmers i know are like this

Open ##5025272
@BlaestEgnen@feddit.dk 2026-10-14 05:27

It’s first in the last few years we’ve begun seeing somewhat stable gaming distros for Linux, which doesn’t require a ton of fiddling for every single game. Yet kernel level anti cheat is still an issue, so if you want to play some of the big PvP games. There’s a lot of inconvenience to get them rolling

Open ##5025594
@Logical@lemmy.world 2026-10-15 06:17

Working as a dev, I have the same experience. The few times I’ve tried to bring Linux up as a viable option to the OS we’re all forced to use at work, and most of us hate using (Win11), there’s little to no interest. There’s a few Mac users on my team, but that’s about it. I think it’s that the majority of folks, even if they’re working in tech, simply don’t have enough of a reason to try something unfamiliar, which might cause them new and unknown problems, or require them to rethink how they use computes, on their own machines. Even though I’m pretty sure that most would prefer it, given some time.

Open ##5041512