I think the biggest problem is software changing from under people's feet. We used to have stable version cycles and when it was time to upgrade, users expected change and having to re-learn some stuff. But now things just change whenever. And sometimes drastically, like buttons that previously had a fixed place and were always there can now only be accessed by moving your cursor in the right place. Very frustrating.

I see your comment's flagged, maybe because of the harsh language but other than that it all rings true to me.

> I think the biggest problem is software changing from under people's feet. We used to have stable version cycles and when it was time to upgrade, users expected change and having to re-learn some stuff.

This. I think it's incredibly inconsiderate to do that to a user who never asked for it.

As a user, I abhor this mentality, and respond to it by leaving. And if I have to stay, I boycott the nag dialogs and just leave them open, to embarrass the developer in front of anyone who may be watching my screencast.

As a programmer, I go out of my way to ensure that my software works the way the user wants, and an upgrade is never demanded.

I design for back and forth compatibility, so that I can go back and forward to any version I desire, as long as there's a commit for it.

It may not work perfectly going back a year, but if it's a stable version, it should run.

The reverse is also true. Don't blame people maintaining software for changing your routine. You make a lot of assumptions there but the reality is often much more nuanced. Everything changes, all the time, that's a rule that is true for absolutely everything in life.

> Don't blame people maintaining software for changing your routine.

In this case it's people maintaining software that I don't use telling me I'm problematic for not switching to their stack, away from existing software that works perfectly fine and is also actively maintained by people who don't call me a flat-earther. Easy choice.

Hey that's a bit dishonest. The guy is not calling you a problematic flat-earther if you're simply not using his product. He would be if you were writing angry reddit comments about how Wayland sucks because you heard it sucks, I guess. Are you?

Sorry but that makes even less sense. If it's software that you don't use, how does it impact you? Nobody is holding a gun against your neck.

Correct, which is why I'm amused and not upset and will happily continue using my aged-but-working software. I'm also a horrible evil 𝓷ᴠɪᴅɪᴀ user because I need CUDA for a lot of my work :)

And people wonder why Linux isn't popular outside of industry and hobbyists... Like, sure, maintainers can tell all their users to sod off, but don't be surprised when very few people are left around using your software, and especially don't get confused when companies refuse to invest in Linux ports.

All the successful projects Linux users like to talk about nowadays (gaming now a practical thing, new kernel features, Wine getting really good) were all bankrolled by massive billion dollar corps like Valve and Google, because the community itself has no discipline to see things through.

At least GNU of the old days was organised enough to know not to break people's workflows - just look at how stable coreutils have been - but GUI software for regular people somehow doesn't deserve to get the same treatment.

> And people wonder why Linux isn't popular outside of industry and hobbyists

"Linux"? We're discussing a category that includes Gmail UI changes. Is Gmail not popular?

Wine was actually pretty damned good even before Valve got involved. I remember playing Half-Life with Wine in the early aughties.

I think that's fair, but they have done a good job of bringing much of the industry on board, rather than just being an esoteric hobbyist project.

I didn't mean to imply that Valve's contributions have not been significant in improving the situation with Wine, only that unlike the other examples Wine was already good before the involvement of a wealthy company.

Wine was a great technical achievement, but I remember it taking me hours crawling through WineDB and reading config guides to get most games working. Even for someone in the know, it was very impractical compared to clicking "Play" in Steam. That user experience makes all the difference.

> because the community itself has no discipline to see things through

Maybe discipline is a problem, but time, money and access to information is too.

What does it even mean? Communities build what they need for their usecase and in this regard it's highly successful. It might not be your usecase but then, you can decide to create your own community and build it or look somewhere else. But it's not because something do not work for you that it's not successful.

Is that really true? I can get into basically any car and understand everything immediately because they are all mostly the same. If Linux could software update the insides of a Linux car it would be unrecognizable every year.

Except when they're not. I made the mistake of assuming the + and - buttons on the steering wheel of my Subaru had the same functionality as those on my Prius' steering wheel, which incrementally adjusts cruise control speed.

On the Subaru, they are clutch controls. The result was downshifting into 1st gear going 70mph/100kmh+.

You can probably walk up to a Gnome, KDE, Windows, Mac or Chrome computer and use it after a couple seconds. I don't fully understand all the configuration options my car has - I set it to "comfort" and that's it and yet I can drive it.

I don't think I can tell you immediately whether my laptop is running under Wayland or X (I only can because Wayland and FontForge haven't been talking for some time). Does it annoy me? Yes. Does it annoy me to the point of anger? I'm an adult. I have other things going on in my life besides graphical back-ends.

You can. I can. With a small adjustment period where the hotkeys or actions you expect to work don't and minimal annoyance and you make small adjustments to do the same task.

This is not how average people are AT ALL. Let someone use one of the above and give them something new and watch them be frustrated for at least the first entire day of usage with continuing friction happening for the next week-month every time they find a new task that they don't do that frequently but thought they knew how to do.

Actually your analogy goes more the other way. My minivan is nothing like my suburban from when I was a kid except for having a steering wheel and a gas pedal. Pushbutton electric start, automatic transmission, power steering, automatic door locks, wireless key fob, bluetooth stereo comes on by itself without asking me, and probably next year it will be an electric vehicle with completely different mechanical characteristics. Basically, /bin/bash is the same and you might compare that to the steering wheel.

Cars changes a lot. Basics do not change, but it's the same for computers to. Keyboard, mouse, display, touchscreen, all this has been there for decades. Details though do change a lot. Compare the controls of 2 cars, one from the 70s, one from now, I'm quite sure you'll have much more buttons, a touchscreen, things to learn like how to disable airbags when needed, where to get the maintenance information. Even something like starting the car itself is likely to be different.

The insides, thank deities, would stay pretty much the same or even better (safer). If you opened the bonnet, you'd be in tears about how solid and sound everything is. You'd need to figure out where the doors are, though, and why some son of a gun decided that the steering wheel should protrude from the ceiling.

Asking the manufacturer would open the flood gates about how ungrateful you are about all the years put into designing the thing, and how other options were "confusing" to drivers, although said drivers should clearly be of some extraterrestrial species with a different set of sensory organs and appendages.

The whole purpose of tools is to make people more productive. Software is just another set of tools. Software works for people. Not the other way around.

Imagine a screwdriver that would randomly switch to requiring a hammering motion instead of rotary motion, then the next day it only works if you hold it just right, then the day after that it freezes itself to the table to download updates and the update changes the shape of the tool bit so it won't even turn the screw you are now two days late on tightening. People would riot.

With FOSS on my own devices that's usually pretty easy -- I'll install what I like, and I expect that most reasonable people won't be upset if I choose not to put their software on my machines (clearly not the case in TFA, but you can't make everyone happy).

Probably not your point, but I absolutely do blame maintainers of proprietary software for changing my routine. Webapps, free software, and whatnot I can understand (even if I don't necessarily like it), but if I pay in full for a lifetime license to a specific version of software then I fully expect, at a minimum, for that software to not have auto-updating backdoors for any reason (looking at you Garmin/Navionics).

i,ve been in the software world for 2+ decades, worn all kinds of hats, and obviously been on the user and support side quite a bit too. i know what i,m talking about here.

most software changes are unnecessary and are forced on users unnecessarily, and that,s why people hate software.

> Don't blame people maintaining software for changing your routine.

IMO that depends if the software is paid for or not. If I regularly pay for a software I can have demands.