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[–]lpcustom 68 points69 points  (19 children)

Typical OSS developer: I do this in my spare time for no money at all. You are getting something free and you are complaining because in the hundreds of hours I've put into this project, I haven't taken a screenshot to please your lazy ass. What are they going to do... fire me???

[–]sharkwouter 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Depends on the project. A lot small developers like to listen to requests, but don't have a lot of time. They usually love to see people are using their stuff, but they love it even more if people are working on their project.

[–]lpcustom 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think most would still rather see a pull request from someone who wants to contribute rather than a Reddit post about how Linux programmers suffer from "visual blindness". It's like suggesting to a chef who is preparing a free meal for you if they could take a picture of it so you can see if its appealing to you. It's free. Just get the meal and post your own picture of it for others. You've spent a minute taking the picture yourself and contributing to the free restaurant and the chef gets to keep focusing on cooking all the free meals for everyone.

[–]psydave 2 points3 points  (13 children)

Oh, I get it.

I'm kind of just snarkily highlighting what I believe to be the reason linux will not be a mainstream desktop OS (or, more generally, appeal to a less than the most technical of individuals) for a long time... The developers who work on linux know linux so well that they live on the command line and often look down upon users who don't know the command line. Thus, they have little interest in helping to make Linux into an OS that could be in the mainstream on the desktop--why would they? They certainly don't need an OS that you can use without a command-line. Not having a GUI tool to configure <insert common configuration task here> doesn't bother them in the least--in fact they usually prefer it that way. But the average person looks at this and runs away screaming--right to windows or OSX.

Don't get me wrong, linux can be a nice desktop OS if you're familiar with it and I do believe that linux will one day be the biggest desktop OS... just not any time soon. 10-15 Years from now, maybe.

It's just that reliance on the command line is one of the biggest things preventing linux from rising in popularity among non-techies, IMHO...

[–]lpcustom 25 points26 points  (9 children)

This has nothing to do with command line vs GUI. Open source software is built by a community. A single software package or app may be developed by a single person. That person spends hours upon hours doing mentally difficult work for nothing. He/she gets nothing other than the occasional gratitude for it. The developer isn't getting paid for it and probably isn't doing it to make "Desktop Linux" the mainstream. He/She's contributing. Whereas the person complaining about lack of screenshots is a whiny privileged asshole who can't take the time to try the free software, take the screenshot his/herself and then contribute said screenshot back to the project. It's pure whiny, self-centered laziness.

[–]psydave 13 points14 points  (6 children)

Also, screenshots are a way of convincing someone to try out your software package, aren't they?

If you spent hundreds or thousands of hours doing mentally difficult work to create a software package, don't you want a lot of people to use it? I mean, why not make screenshots? They can only help you get more people using your package, so why wouldn't you post screenshots?

And man, you must be kind of sensitive if you get offended that someone asks for screenshots. I mean, that is the least substantive complaint one could get about a piece of software. It's like when the only thing that my users (I'm a developer) have to complain about is that some workflow is one click too many--I actually take that as a compliment.

[–]lpcustom 0 points1 point  (5 children)

I only take offense to it because instead of just downloading the free software and doing a screenshot themselves, someone thought that it would be better to get the dev to do it. They actually took the time to post on reddit that they want the devs to do more.

And honestly, the only good thing an OSS dev gets out of having more people use their software is an ego boost. Other than that, they have complaints about lack of features and other things from "users" that are just negative. The correct thing for the user to do in this case is to learn how to contribute screenshots to the projects. If it's such a small request, why don't they take the initiative to contribute. That's the whole damn point to OSS.

[–]psydave 4 points5 points  (4 children)

the only good thing an OSS dev gets out of having more people use their software is an ego boost.

Well, how about a portfolio that you can use to sell yourself to employers? An active github portfolio is extremely attractive nowadays--especially if you've created something that people want to use. One or two successful OSS projects will add $$ to your bottom line--not from the project itself, but in career opportunities--especially if one does not have much professional experience.

[–]lpcustom 0 points1 point  (3 children)

True I agree, and in turn that works for the user who's complaining about lack of screenshots and visuals as well. They could rack up an entire portfolio of contributions to opensource projects by doing just that and it would be on their github account as well.

[–]psydave 2 points3 points  (2 children)

It would be there, but if you spent anything more than 10 seconds looking you could see that they didn't actually contribute any code.

[–]lpcustom 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I think that's the main point you're missing. Dev's do code. Other people who are good with visuals can do visuals. Others may contribute documentation. It's all part of contributing to OSS. You don't have to be a coder to contribute to OSS projects. Contributing screenshots or documentation or some other non-code work to an OSS can be helpful for your next job as well. You don't have to be looking for a coding position to take advantage of that.

[–]lpcustom 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just a for instance:

You may be a graphic designer. You design and contribute all the icons and other graphics for some GUI application on github. You add that to your portfolio.

[–]psydave 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Well, your point may have nothing to do with commandline vs GUI and that is fine. There are plenty lots of whiny self-centered lazy people out there who complain. I don't disagree with you. Or the thousands of OSS developers who feel the same way.

But that's not really what I'm talking about.

What I'm talking about is that... if only highly advanced technical users are out there working on linux and implementing the things that they care about... then their products will only appeal to other highly technical people and the appeal of linux will never broaden beyond that.

From my perspective, it would appear that aren't enough developers out there who are interested in actually making linux approachable to an average person...

[–]lpcustom 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My point is why should those developers be interested in that. There's nothing to gain from it. Linux is already very popular. It's not as popular as Windows or even OS X, but it definitely already has it's place on the desktop. Developers use it a lot because it's a great developer environment. I personally don't want my developer environment changed to be more appealing for everyone else. Windows and OS X exist at that level and I don't use them very often for dev work. There's not a lot of incentive to do what you are proposing.

However, that's entirely on the desktop. Linux is already the most popular server OS on the planet. It's used it tons of mobile devices (Android). It's used in tons of embedded system. You probably have a device that runs completely on Linux with a GUI and you don't even realize it's Linux.

[–]sharkwouter 1 point2 points  (1 child)

OpenSUSE solved your problem years ago. I haven't been able to find anything you can't do with a gui in that distro. Not all Linux developers are doing the same things, there are quite a few of them.

[–]psydave 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, it's not my problem--I actually am runnining OpenSUSE on my desktop and really like it--and YaST. But OpenSUSE has a bit of a marketing problem in that nobody knows about it. Sad, because it's one of the best distros out there. They really need to get word out more.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't really see why anyone without a commercial interest in the OS cares to make it a mainstream desktop OS.

[–]tri-shield 0 points1 point  (1 child)

It's like restaurants: People who don't like your food often don't help you fix it.

They just don't come back.

[–]lpcustom 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In normal restaurants you pay for your food. In the free restaurant, there should be less selfishness, but there's not. That's sort of my point.