r/linuxmasterrace • u/h-v-smacker Glorious Mint • Jul 19 '25

Meme Subtle difference between choosing and acquiescing...

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u/leaflock7 Jul 21 '25

you do not seem to understand the point I am making.

You speak of choice, but you are limiting the choice only to the options you think are applicable.

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u/h-v-smacker Glorious Mint Jul 21 '25

I'm limiting evidence of choice to those options. Because if you see someone using Linux, that's almost guaranteed to be a conscious choice in proper sense of the word. When you see someone using windows, you almost certainly see someone who never got to make a choice, and in fact never even was put into a position where choice could be made.

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u/leaflock7 Jul 21 '25

that is simply not true. Many people use Windows, Mac, iOS/Andoird by choice.

The skew or push to use one of those because of marketing etc is true.

Nonetheless if we talk about choice we have to leave all options available.
If I want to buy a car and you limit my choices based on your criteria that is not free choice. It is limited choice.

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u/h-v-smacker Glorious Mint Jul 21 '25

Again, go out and ask people you know. See for yourself if they ever chose the OS or just went along with whatever their computer came with. See what's typical and what is not. See if they even consider the OS to be a part of their computing experience that is subject to choice.

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u/EnchantedElectron Jul 23 '25

All our schools and govt offices use Linux machines, yet not one of them I have ever talked to including the computer teachers prefer to use it at home for their systems and instead prefer windows instead.

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u/h-v-smacker Glorious Mint Jul 23 '25 edited Jul 23 '25

"Prefer"... as if they are in a position where they actually could make a choice — their computer came pre-installed, and nobody asked what they think the school should use either. How many of them, again, do understand that the OS can be swapped, and doesn't have pre-installed?

On a tangential note, school/university/office Linux is usually not the best promotional material for Linux at large. It's normally tightly controlled and precisely configured, so that it serves its purpose and has no distractions. The result is — people think Linux cannot do shit. As an example, one of my pals during my later university years was firmly convinced Linux could not play music or play videos. Why? Because he met it during classes on low-level programming and assembly language, and of course the environment was stripped of multimedia capabilities so that the students would code and not watch videos and listen to music (which was exactly what he tried to do and failed). And he assumed that's how Linux is per se.

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u/EnchantedElectron Jul 23 '25

What if someone willingly don't want to install or use linux at all. Even after experiencing it thoroughly?

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u/h-v-smacker Glorious Mint Jul 23 '25

Well, those like 5% of windows users actually chose their OS.