Why Are Arch Linux Users So TOXIC?

If you've ever spent any time online, you might have heard how TOXIC the Arch Linux community is. You might even have been cyberbullied for using Ubuntu by an ELITIST Arch user! But are Arch Linux users really as rude and elitist as you might have heard? In this video, I'll explain why the claims of Arch users' toxicity might be a little bit exaggerated...

Background footage:

0:00 Intro
0:49 Why are Arch users so rude?
7:23 Why do Arch users so elitist?
12:12 Conclusion

[anonymouscommentator]

In my experience the people with the best tech skills usually struggle with social skills. Not just in the Linux community, I've seen it in way too often in my uni studies as well.

[exstasis]

The worst is when I do a Google search for a problem and I get a forum thread as the first result, and the first response is to Google it. Well, I just did, and it let me to this page where someone actually directly answered the question below.

[_moosh]

If you're so hung up on how dumb someone's question sounds, the best way to go about interacting with them is to... not answer their question. If you want Arch to be difficult and unforgiving and manual-based SO bad, then make them need to google the question. There are no dumb questions, just a lack of patience from the people who think they can answer them. Poor teachers for an already difficult subject.

[alefalfa]

"Arch Linux isn't that hard, it only requires patience, reading and a lot of manual configuration" Thats pretty much the definition of "hard" in the context of software. Great video.

[vladimirvinogradov]

I recently moved in a new block, it is really popular among young people, who work in tech or other fancy industries. A few days ago there was some kind of earthquake or something like that. There was a very loud sound and the ground was moving under the feet for a few seconds, some people even got seriously injured. Later I read the local news and they report that the most lightweight arch user just fell off his chair.

[mx]

The thing that annoys me as a sysadmin is that some Arch Linux users see all tinkering and tweaking as the purpose of using Linux and feel elitist because they are doing that, when Linux actually is a tool, to get done what you want.

[hugoedelarosa]

Calling them dumb questions tells me everything I need to know about Arch users. A wiki is kinda useless if a noob doesn’t even know what to put on a search bar.

[knight_lautrec_of_carim]

>posts video on how he's sad he wasted his 20s online
>proud arch user
lmao

[netscans]

I've personally found the server side of the Linux community to be incredibly professional and a lot more mature, even in the way that they help users. They reply to forum threads like theyre solving tickets, rather than showboating their knowledge or getting upset when you don't ask the right way. It's definitely not perfect but there's a noticeable difference.

[rootbsd]

I remember one time I was having an issue in FreeBSD and people on r/FreeBSD were telling me to read the handbook, but the problem I was having was not addressed at all in the handbook, it was like a kneejerk reaction for some people just to assume I was lazy or stupid. So this can happen in any tech community, not just Arch.

[LuealEythernddare]

If anyone unironically says “real Linux users use arch, ” just keep 2 things in mind.

1. Gentoo is harder
2. Linus Torvolds, the creator of Linux, uses Fedora.

I love arch, but I do still occasionally like to sit back and enjoy the nice simplicity of mint, fedora, pop os, or….. very occasionally, Ubuntu

[BigWyrm]

How do you know if someone uses Arch Linux?

Because they will tell you... Over and over again.

[megamanstarforce]

My biggest problem with people posting unhelpful or toxic answers on forum posts is that it pollutes the search results for all other users which makes it more annoying to find the answer as they have to both waste time reading the daft forum post and terrible answer then continue searching for the answer to a potentially difficult problem anyway

[oliver_twistor]

I'm always afraid to ask questions on forums like StackOverflow, because there is always some a**hole answering your question with just insults, or downvoting into oblivion just because you missed reading that one Usenet post from 1992 explaining the issue. And I'm a computer engineer with over 10 years of professional experience. But every time I go online I feel inferior.

A common excuse for people being rude in answers is that on forums like StackOverflow or Arch people aren't paid and they are giving people their time. My response to that is if you haven't got time to answer people nicely, you shouldn't probably be on those forums answering questions right now. It goes both ways in that of course nobody can demand volunteers to give you answers on your every question, but at the same time nobody is forcing you to answer questions. You don't _have_ to put up with "stupid" questions if you don't want to. I feel that there are quite a few people on these forums whose intentions are not first and foremost to help, but to show their skills. They're not doing it for the newbies, they're doing it for their own benefit. And that is not a good motivation at all.

To properly help people, you have to have a drive to help and a humility to go with it. And just because you are knowledgeable in a subject doesn't mean you're a good teacher. The smartest person isn't always the best teacher, because often they can't relate. Savants who learned Linux at age 3 and programmed their own OS at age 5 probably isn't the best person to help 78 year old Albert update his computer for the first time in his life. Both my parents were teachers their whole lives and my father who was well-liked by most of his students struggled in school himself, especially with math and physics, which were two of the subjects he taught at the high school he worked at. He always said that the fact he struggled made him such a good teacher, because he could put himself into the shoes of his struggling students.

I like that you said multiple times in the video that it's okay to for example use Arch, but it's also okay to use something else, and neither makes you "better" than anyone else. The reasons for not using something complex is often not that you can't, but instead that you don't want the hassle. If a chef orders a hamburger from McDonald's, it doesn't mean that they can't cook or that they think that McDonald's is 3-star Michelin dining; they might just want to eat something quick and don't want the hassle to make something super special themselves. I don't use vim because I can't bother to have to learn all the commands (I have poor memory due to disability, so I'm bad at remembering commands and stuff like that). It's not that I'm stupid or that I can't learn stuff (I'm an engineer after all), but I'd rather use nano (or heaven forbid, kate --- yeah, I know, I like GUI's /gasp/ haha).

[manwithstds]

Never ask an arch user what the age of consent be according to them.

[node]

I remember being referred to the wiki, finding the information I needed was literally missing, and being told that missing information on the wiki was "user error" on my part. I moved on to other distros after that.

[Stevos-Corner]

Veteran Linux user here. I’ve been using nix we used to share it on floppy disc. Before Debian even existed. Back in the day the people that dabbled building Linux were great and helpful people. Because we had to build every package from scratch. We all had a common goal and when people got stuck we helped each other. Now that Linux has become a complete sh!t show and distro nightmare all because of package managers and the different ways to install it the Arch community decided to get on their high horse and think they are so much better because they type a few commands that run scripts to install their distro. They aren’t elitists as the scripts install the system but these young Arch users that have never touched an LFS install or attempted a Gentoo install think they are just the best. That and fighting over what distro is the best. The best distro is the one that works for you and that’s all it should be. Take away your package managers and you’ve got the Linux Kernel and the GNU Tools underneath just like every other Linux distro. So all the fighting and toxicity is for nothing. That’s why Linux will never hit the mainstream and forever be a server distro and will remain in the bedrooms of people that like to make their WM look nice so they can post them up on dotfiles.

[liquidmobius]

Almost all Linux forums are notorious for being toxic. And many of the members don't just simply "volunteer their time for free" as if they're just being altruistic. Instead, they're there simply to be toxic to new users behind the anonymity of a username and keyboard. There's a big difference. People are always going to ask stupid questions. Just because you've used "fill in the blank" distro for X number of years doesn't give someone the right to jettison decency.

[prottentogo]

the problem is that as a total beginner I often can't even describe the problem I'm having when searching for stuff

[BrocksJellyFilledDoughnuts]

As an artist who’s recently dipped my toes in the tech community, the comparison is almost night and day. Most artists are very understanding and sympathetic to beginners, where it seems techies are more harsh and gatekeep-ish. Just something I noticed.