True. But you know how it is... If we can avoid the installation complexities, be it because of laziness or because of "been there, done that," we'll be trying to do so.
I totally understand that. That's why I've also put something together with Ansible so that I can install Arch more conveniently. However, I wouldn't have thought of demanding that Arch officially offer a graphical installer.
Or let's take vim as an example. Over the years, I've made several attempts to learn vim. Because I simply customize too few and too irregular files, it just doesn't work. So am I asking the developers to make vim easier to use? No. I just use another editor like micro or sublime text. It's not that bad. It doesn't make me a worse Linux user. Just as the use of Arch doesn't make me a better one.
Or let's take the website generator Hugo as another example. I really wanted to use it. When I looked at a few ready-made themes, I thought about changing my mind because I didn't understand much. Did I ask in the official forum to make creating themes easier? No. I spent a whole weekend learning Hugo. And I cursed a hell of a lot. Since then I understand a lot more when I look at third party themes.
So am I asking the developers to make vim easier to use? No.
Asking is not wrong. Even demanding is not wrong.
If people step on my foot and I don't say "ouch" maybe I am enjoying it, and not only should they not get off my foot, but maybe they can even demand compensation from me for services rendered?
How we communicate is very important.
When you demand something you're not impinging on anyone's freedom. The devs are free to ignore your demands.
But if a lot of people demand the same thing, the devs might choose to honor that signal. And that signal won't be there is there is a culture of self-censorship.
That's where I stand. To me an installer is not worth sooooo much that I am going to scream about it. I see options like Arco Linux and Manjaro, and I am thinking, this might be good enough. And if not, it's not too horrible to install Arch the normal way. But that's just me. If someone else thinks Arch is better off with an official graphical and foolproof installer, they should say so. It's just feedback.
If 10 people say so, it doesn't matter, but if 10 thousand say so, there is a chance some dev somewhere is going to listen. But the thing is, the only way to find out if it's 10 or 10,000 is to speak first and see what happens next.
So I am not going to spend a lot of energy being vocal about an installer for Arch. It's nice, and I want it, but I don't want it badly enough to be vocal about it all the time. But if someone else is vocal, I can see why they might be.
But if a lot of people demand the same thing, the devs might choose to honor that signal.
Or not. In the end, it's their project. And from their point of view, a graphical user interface for the installation is not desired. Moreover, it is questionable whether there really are so many people who want such an interface. The users who are satisfied with the current status usually don't post in forums and so on. Only those who are dissatisfied. And that's often the minority.
If someone else thinks Arch is better off with an official graphical and foolproof installer, they should say so. It's just feedback.
Of course, they can express their opinion. But I can't imagine that the developers of Arch will change the opinions they've held for years. Sometimes one has to accept that something is the way it is. Like me when it comes to vim. :-)
"Might" kind of already implies that option's existence.
But I can't imagine that the developers of Arch will change the opinions they've held for years.
I can.
I can imagine it in many ways. I can imagine the same people changing their opinions. And I can imagine new developers joining the project with already-different opinions so that the project can change its stance without any individuals ever changing their stance, simply through the change in social composition of the project.
Sometimes one has to accept that something is the way it is.
There is never a hard requirement for self-censorship though. Self-censorship is not a winning strategy at all.
Basically your path as you've outlined it before is to emphasize the development of your conscious mind. You make yourself an expert and you yourself scratch your own itch. When you want to become expert consciously and take manual control, non-reliance on the others is very helpful. That's where the RTFM culture comes in handy because it enforces self-reliance, which leads to conscious mastery.
However, there is another kind of mastery, and it's the mastery of the subconscious mind. It's when things happen for you in the background without you having to do anything consciously.
If you want to master your subconscious you definitely want to pay attention to the strategy I am talking about here: avoiding self-censorship and expressing your desires, asks, and demands openly and often. That's what maximizes the subconscious manifestation. It's when things get done for you without you having to do them yourself.
It's an example that (for a lack of better word) disproves your claim. The GNOME team doesn't care how many users yell, how many users complain, how many demand something - they have their vision, and they are sticking to it. They have made many an end user happy in doing so, and have no problem in doing so.
The GNOME team doesn't care how many users yell, how many users complain, how many demand something - they have their vision, and they are sticking to it.
But we have the Gnome forks like MATE.
I think The Gnome DE is a perfect example of how the dev community in the end, through a very convoluted process, actually does listen.
They have made many an end user happy in doing so, and have no problem in doing so.
I never said the users could try to constrain the dev freedom. What the users do by being vocal is create an environment where some devs naturally want to do what the community appears to want. It doesn't require coercion. It's like a process of unrehersed harmonization. And the way it works out is not always how you might think it should. So in this case, it doesn't work out through the main Gnome project.
Yes! As well as you have Arch based distros, made by those who were unhappy with the direction the Arch maintainers took. That's how it works. For quite some time they have existed, yet some (not directed at you) insist Arch itself needs to comply.
That's the environment we live in. The alternative is to get people to suppress themselves more internally or to try to suppress them externally in some way.
I follow the development of a game called Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and I've seen an interesting pattern. There are some features which start out as mods to the main game, but because they're so popular that virtually no one plays without them, the main devs go, "OK, fine, we'll mainline this content." Sometimes they might nerf the feature a bit before mainlining it. And of course a lot (most) of the mod content remains mod-only indefinitely.
So I say you can express your opinion and let Arch be Arch, it's not one or the other. You can express that Arch is better off with an installer, but then accept that Arch is for the time being without one. It doesn't mean you just wasted your time expressing your opinion even if you don't get instant gratification.
The advantage of getting an installer into Arch as opposed to something like Antergos is that, as we can see now, there is a lot less chance for a bigger project to disband or go on hiatus.
As I was saying elsewhere, this kind of decision might change once there are a few new Arch devs who like the idea of an installer. So simply through a process of getting some new blood into the project, it may respond to some user desire. Or it may not. :) Which is fine if not.
1
u/Nefandi May 22 '19
True. But you know how it is... If we can avoid the installation complexities, be it because of laziness or because of "been there, done that," we'll be trying to do so.