- You love giving your data away
- You enjoy being tracked by your operating system
- You’re happy when your computer tells you “no”
- You prefer someone else deciding what you can run
- You feel uncomfortable if you get to have options
- You’d rather battle corporate tech support
- You’d rather rent your software than own it
- You think ads belong on your desktop
- You love being lied to about what’s “industry standard”
- You like rebooting for every little update
- You’re uncomfortable when software is transparent
- You think community-made tools can’t be “professional”
- You want intrusive AI everywhere, whether it helps or not
- You think the command line is only for hackers
- You never really wanted your computer to be yours anyway



Why should I care? Linux has enough users as it is, development is sustainable. I don’t want all users to switch at once because that would flood forums with noobs asking silly questions.
It’s their loss if they don’t use Linux. Why should I encourage them to do so? Just to have some shitty Electron apps more which I don’t use?
It’s much more painful for me that the places I work at don’t use Linux. They won’t be swayed by such an article anyway.
I’m a bit less nihilistic about it, though. I acknowledge the benefit if being a small enough “market” that the enshittification doesn’t hit Linux like a tsunami as you alluded.
More users means more bullshit money grubbers, more dishonesty, more incentive for greedy hackers to attack.
Are you serious? Do you really believe linux can’t get any better or that linux is perfect for you?
The more people that use linux the more donations it gets from people and the more people use it.
Also if you think linux is so awesome isn’t it nice to other people to share that awesomeness with them?
As well the more people that use linux the more apps will be supported on it. Can you say with full confidence that there isn’t a single windows or macos app that doesn’t work perfectly on linux that you don’t want? Even if linux is perfect for you, you rely on the kindness of open source maintainers to maintain linux, can you really not reserve any kindness for other people?
That is the real altruistic, hopeful view, but there are downsides that I enumerated in my other comment. Here’s another, though - With large scale acceptance comes a flood of people who just want a tool that works, not something they can build on or improve.
The greatest strength of this community is the love of the platform and the joy of exploration. Most are in it for altruistic or at least self enrichment reasons. Many are able to contribute when they see a gap. That can be diluted quickly.
Then the entrepreneurs see opportunities to make money from those people, and the enshitification begins.