No.

I did, regularly, up until a few years ago, when the article discussions and forums seemed to take a sudden and sharp turn towards being very antagonistic and then even hateful (racism, anti-semitism, neo-nazi slogans). The site operators and moderators appeared to be fine with that at the time. I don't want to be involved with that sort of behavior, even to the extent of being counted toward banner ad revenue, so I walked away and haven't been back.

[a] wonderful combination of toxic & clueless.

The drink that got me kicked out of Bartending School was was described with exactly those words!

No. The articles themselves aren't too bad for the most part, but sometimes they're clickbaity, & sneakily pave the way to the off-putting quarrels in the forums.

As many others who have replied here, I rely on GOL for general news, in addition to a few RSS feeds of specific things that I'm interested in.

For news & opinion pieces with a more technical/professional bent, lwn.net is probably the best choice. Though I must admit most of it goes *way* over my head, and many articles are paywalled (temporarily) as well.

The site operators and moderators appeared to be fine with that at the time.

There’s just one person though, isn’t there? He can hardly moderate it all when he’s doing all the benchmarks and stuff.

And yeah, Phoronix comments tend to be even more techy than Larabel himself, which isn't very helpful, nor welcoming.

It's not that they're techy - I like techy - it's that they're the wonderful combination of toxic & clueless.

There are a lot of major trolls there. Like you look at the KDE discussion on this site... pretty calm and useful conversation, and actually discussing the issues with desktop environments. Compare that to the Phoronix forums where it's very fanboy-ish. Bordering on the terrible idiots who post to Apple forums.

And yeah, Phoronix comments tend to be even more techy than Larabel himself, which isn't very helpful, nor welcoming.

It's not that they're techy - I like techy - it's that they're the wonderful combination of toxic & clueless.

There are a lot of major trolls there. Like you look at the KDE discussion on this site... pretty calm and useful conversation, and actually discussing the issues with desktop environments. Compare that to the Phoronix forums where it's very fanboy-ish. Bordering on the terrible idiots who post to Apple forums.

The Apple idiots are often funny in their innocence; & I don't recall people being mean to one another on places like macrumors. Linux trolls are a sadistic bunch in comparison.

Linux trolls are a sadistic bunch in comparison.

In all seriousness, it's because we don't look after each other enough. There's a (sadly) standard and well-practised methodology for turning people into extremists: create some wedge issue as a tribal marker and use it to drive radicalisation. There's no shortage of contemporary examples. The demographics of gamers and Linux users both have populations that are particularly vulnerable to this - (often male), isolated, marginalised, and feeling unheard. With a whole bunch of Linux gamers... well, Liam's got quite the job.

He’s doing fine I think.

My take on Apple is that they get a lot right and some things they do are just brilliant. Since people like assessing things in binary terms, for many anything they do must be amazing, hence the naive fanboyism.

With Linux, if you’re not an elitist who’s happy no one uses it because it makes you feel special, you’ll want to show others how great it is and that means glazing over any issues it might have because you have some convincing to do. So we tend to ignore obvious problems and only show the unicorns and rainbows.

Especially since any negative will most likely be an immediate turnoff to an outsider. It’s a precarious position to be in for sure.

Google searches often take me there, I always seem to leave disappointed and/or confused. The take away must be they have excellent SEO but content that seems to be written for a very small circle of people.

He’s doing fine I think.

My take on Apple is that they get a lot right and some things they do are just brilliant. Since people like assessing things in binary terms, for many anything they do must be amazing, hence the naive fanboyism.

With Linux, if you’re not an elitist who’s happy no one uses it because it makes you feel special, you’ll want to show others how great it is and that means glazing over any issues it might have because you have some convincing to do. So we tend to ignore obvious problems and only show the unicorns and rainbows.

Especially since any negative will most likely be an immediate turnoff to an outsider. It’s a precarious position to be in for sure.

I have a near opposite view of Apple. Their products are insular and insanely expensive. This leads to various cognitive biases, such as choice-support and sunk cost. They paid £3K for that laptop, with that operating system and along you come suggesting that a free O/S is better? Pff, ridiculous. Go away.

I bought my last Apple product in 2006 - a newly launched Mac Mini which I bought as a (very expensive) media streamer. I hated it so much I wrote an angry blog post about back in 2008. Maybe some of those quirks have been ironed out over the years. Maybe.

(Should also say that I wrote that well before my revelation about "define yourself by the things you love, not the things you hate". So, my apologies for the negativity in the post.)

macOS is also free, so that doesn’t hold water ;-)

Arguably, Apple’s products cost what a product should, considering you’re not subsidising it with info about your life and/or other companies are not subsidising it with their preinstalled shovelware. I have a love/hate relationship with Apple, like I said, some stuff they make is awesome, other things they do less so.

Apple’s main win is sidestepping completely the downward spiral of cutthroat pricing and shrinking margins of PC hardware vendors. Their commitment to privacy is another. Whether they actually are committed to it is another matter, ofc and unverifiable at this point.

macOS is also free, so that doesn’t hold water ;-)

No, it really isn't.

They ask money for it now? I really haven’t been keeping up with the times.

They ask money for it now? I really haven’t been keeping up with the times.

They used to. I think recent upgrades are now free of charge once you're in the Apple jail - is that what you're referring to? My point is that you can only buy or indeed use OSX by paying for overpriced Apple hardware. You're also accepting terms that you'll never use it on non-Apple hardware, so you definitely can't suggest that is is, in any sense of the word, "free".

Technicalities. You need hardware to run any os, whether cheap or expensive is irrelevant.

Anyway, all this is really off topic.

Phoronix, eh? Hate it or not, PTS is very useful and his benchmarks have uncovered numerous regressions in Linux over the years. It’s some excellent work he does.

macOS is also free, so that doesn’t hold water ;-)

No, it really isn't.

Ha, you pay for it by using Finder and realizing how trash it is. Watched a video recently about a Windows guy attempting to convert to MacOS, and right off the bat he points out that the transferring of files with Finder won't show the actual transfer speed.

Sure there is an application you can purchase that'll show it up by the clock... Which is where you pay for macOS. The OS comes bundled with the hardware, as mirv stated. But you also have to pay for it because almost every little thing that we're used to getting for free, in fact included standard with most distributions, costs money on the mac.

Hell, when I first got my current job, they handed me a mac. It was the first one I'd actually used more than just 'ooh, pretty animation on the minimize' and then I bought Flavours for it (a theming program, yes you have to pay for themes). Well a few releases later they broke theming. It's just not working anymore. The author of the software had said he was going to make a Flavours2, but it never was released as Apple just doesn't want themes.

Was there a huge uproar like there is with Gnome saying they're going to create a library for the look / feel? Nope, because Daddy Apple knows best! Let me have my Brushed Metal, Daddy Apple!

Bordering on the terrible idiots who post to Apple forums.

There are forums dedicated to apples? How can people be upset discussing Granny Smith vs Braeburn? Or maybe they're just discussing their orchards. Possibly how to make the best apple juice or cider.

I'd kill for a Granny Smith right now!

And yeah, Phoronix comments tend to be even more techy than Larabel himself, which isn't very helpful, nor welcoming.

It's not that they're techy - I like techy - it's that they're the wonderful combination of toxic & clueless.

There are a lot of major trolls there. Like you look at the KDE discussion on this site... pretty calm and useful conversation, and actually discussing the issues with desktop environments. Compare that to the Phoronix forums where it's very fanboy-ish. Bordering on the terrible idiots who post to Apple forums.

The Apple idiots are often funny in their innocence; & I don't recall people being mean to one another on places like macrumors. Linux trolls are a sadistic bunch in comparison.

Ha, I have only read a few of the Apple comments at various places due to ordering an m1 max a while back (still waiting for it to show up). The complaints that it's a tiny bit heavier and a tiny bit larger stated as if it were the end of the world. And that they ditched ONE port in favor of magsafe, sd card reader, and HDMI port... it's just silly. I'm hoping to dual boot it eventually. But being the first time actually buying an Apple product... they're a little weird, and yes I'd go so far as to say cultish.

Must admit my surprise by the results so far, guess it's a good idea that I do cover some of the techie stuff and simplify it with a few explainers huh.

Must admit my surprise by the results so far, guess it's a good idea that I do cover some of the techie stuff and simplify it with a few explainers huh.

This is appreciated, along with the ever so simple link to a source which people who are interested in more details can follow. I know that should be online reporting 101, but not everywhere does it, so it's yet another little detail that keeps the quality of GOL higher than most.

Honestly, it bugs me to no end every time I read a big "PC" or other gaming site, when the game name links to a previous article, and there's no plain store link to get where I want to go from their info. It's a small thing to have to load a tab, go to a store, put the name in and then get it but still...it's the little things that make up life. At least if I ever link to a previous article, there's always a plain store link too.

Last edited by Liam Dawe on 17 November 2021 at 4:11 pm UTC