Master of Disaster or not, I have a history of making Open-Source developers, fans, or just users call me names on forums, on social networks, or elsewhere. I know that some such people can rabidly defend their opinions (tunnel vision, much?), but I wanted to find whether all Linux communities (what a big name!) are hellish places. So I decided to post to the forums of two Linux distros: Ubuntu MATE and Linux Lite.

Freedom of speech is a concept meant to protect the individual against the abuses of the public authorities; on the Internet, there’s only the freedom to be called an idiot, and sometimes the freedom of a service’s owner to censor you, but not the guy who abused you. It might not be the first time when I posted opinions and suggestions on a forum in a polite way, only to be told bluntly that I’m a moron, and not only they’re always right and they don’t accept suggestions, but that I should go fuck myself. Would this happen in 2021 too, on the forums of the two Linux distros I selected? It’s time I learned what kinds of psychopaths are out there, starting probably with the developers or maintainers of the said distros.

Recovering my past

Ubuntu MATE being an official flavor, their forums are using the unique SSO authentication of Ubuntu’s, so I wanted to recover my old account, to which I forgot the password. I then discovered my previous last sign-ons on their services:

Oh, at some point I had an “infraction”:

This idiot, p_charles, is no longer a moderator of theirs since 2011, and what happened wasn’t an insult per se, but something considered to have been a flamebait, whatever that was (it’s been removed, and I can’t remember):

The only thing I did was to assert to those nincompoops that at its beginnings in KDE4, Dolphin did not have a Compact List view, as it has today, its 3 views being: Icons, Details, Compact. Back in 2008, its views were: Icons, Details, Columns. Wikipedia wrongly listed them as: Icons, Details, Preview; in fact, Preview can be applied to all view modes. Either way, the third mode was not what is now called Compact or Compact List in all the file managers that have it–meaning all of them but Nautilus in GNOME3 and GNOME4, which simply remove it to satisfy the limited brain capabilities of GNOME’s fans.

The Columns view mode was like this:

It was reminiscent of Mac’s Finder, having originated in NeXT, and it’s called Miller Columns. I encountered this retarded view in GNUStep’s GWorkspace. By the way, I do have proof of my use of GNUStep, but without the file manager:

They abandoned the Columns view in Dolphin 2.0. Thunar almost implemented it, then they decided otherwise. Pantheon’s file manager (Files, a fork of Marlin) has this view, because Pantheon was meant to serve the retards coming form macOS.

Finally, let’s stress that people having an allergy to me weren’t that few back then:

This allergic also ceased to exist in 2011. This being said, I’m officially resurrected on Ubuntu’s sites!

Out of nostalgia, I’ll add an image that reminds me of Ubuntu’s disc jackets from the times of 4.10 to 8.10, when it was all about humanity:

Vectors by Vecteezy

Ubuntu MATE

Posted in Thoughts & Feedback, as The best integration of the most dependable desktop environment, but there’s a flea in the soup:

Hi, y’all!

I used GNOME2 since I first met Ubuntu 4.10 and not very long after GNOME 2.28 was released. I guess I still used 2.30-2.32 occasionally, but the announcement of the future GNOME3 has strongly upset me. Before GNOME2, I was into FVWM, FVWM-Crystal, IceWM, FVWM95. After GNOME2 died, I reluctantly chose XFCE as the only dependable DE, but as everyone knows, XFCE was thought to be moribund at least twice (4.12 and 4.16 were too late and extremely late to the show). Ah, the long road to GTK+3…

In the process, I disregarded MATE. At first, I thought there won’t be enough manpower to maintain an environment abandoned by the herd (sorry for the term). I already disliked the new names of the apps, and I still do when it comes to Atril, Engrampa, and Caja (which I see not as Box, but as Crate, as in “a crate of oranges”), but that doesn’t matter much. What counts is that, while I was sleeping under a rock, MATE not only transitioned to GTK+3, but it has even got rid of some old bugs, and to my huge surprise, it’s so well integrated in Ubuntu MATE 21.04 that it’s really the best 21.04 flavor of all!

Therefore, I simply didn’t know that since MATE 1.20 and Ubuntu MATE 18.04, I could have opted for MATE, as a better and yet so familiar GNOME2 continuation! Instead, I wasted so much time either trying to fall in love with XFCE (which I never quite did, especially as the default configuration is ugly, and customizing the panels is much more clumsy than in GNOME2/MATE), or trying to persuade myself that KDE Plasma 5 is finally usable and without the so many aberrations introduced with KDE4. But even as KDE5 is very decent nowadays, it keeps changing at a crazy pace (This Week in KDE is indicative of their craziness); and yet, they fixed the bug of a missing reflow of the text in Konsole eleven and half years later (but most distros won’t see it too soon), while the devs found more important to add “a variety of useful new features such as inline previews for images and HTML color codes that you hover the cursor over, the ability to assign custom colors to tabs, and a new on-by-default toolbar.”

Finding (rediscovering?) MATE, and especially Ubuntu MATE, seemed a godsend under the circumstances. (I had some useful experiences in Arch land meanwhile, after Manjaro and Debian.) I love how it integrates into the Control Center the Language Support gnome-language-selector offered by the language-selector-gnome package (the name inversion is probably caused by the fact that it replaces language-selector), and the Yaru MATE themes are über-gorgeous! Also, the defaults are so well-thought that the distro is almost fully usable out of the box!

I said “almost” because the typical user would look for the traditional “The 10, 12, 15 or 25 Things to Do After Installing Distro X” article (many years ago I too had a list of “9 things to do after installing Ubuntu”; and even Ubuntu MATE 21.04 has a few steps of possibly desired customizations before reaching the optimal state (even when using it as a live distro):

1. Change the layout from the Welcome screen or MATE Tweak: people used to Windows or KDE would prefer Redmond. Die-hard fans of the non-searchable Applications, Places, System trio would switch from Familiar to Traditional.

2. Most people nowadays would prefer to change the theme to Yaru-MATE-dark.

3. In such a case, they might also want to change in Pluma the color scheme to Yaru-MATE-dark.

4. Change the font rendering smoothing to Grayscale, Full. (For years, I thought I was the only person in billions who considers RGB shades to a black-on-white text idiotic, and who actually sees rainbows on a supposedly B&W page; is there any printer in this world to replace gray shades with colors? Nope. Then, I noticed there are distros that default to Grayscale, Full, such as Linux Lite; and other people who think like me, such as Igor Ljubuncic aka Dedoimedo, which is even pickier than I.)

5. Remove the Disk Mounter applet, which is too much in a one-panel layout, and even with dual-panel layouts.

6. In Caja, change the Default View to Compact View, and uncheck “All columns have the same width.” (If a file manager doesn’t have a compact list view, I refuse to use it.)

7. Install Synaptic. (GNOME2 without Synaptic? OK, it’s MATE now, but that’s no excuse.)

8. Install ubuntu-restricted-extras.

That’s about it. Sure thing, people using it as a live distro might also need to change the keyboard layout, the time zone, and possibly use the Language Support.

There is one severe criticism I had to direct to Ubuntu MATE’s team: it is not “why snapd?”, nor “why is the Snap support enabled by default?”, but this one: why had ubuntu-mate-welcome, gtk-theme-yaru-mate, and icon-theme-yaru-mate to be installed from Snap Store? They are three bloody packages that define an official Ubuntu flavor, and they should have been hosted as regular packages, in the package pool! Please don’t try to persuade me that Ubuntu would have refused Wimpy this tiny demand!

OK, I understand: despite being so much into MATE, and despite having a “LINUX LUDDITES” sticker, he’s not a Luddite (I am!). He’s Uncle Snapcraft, and he also decided there’s a need for a new Ubuntu installer, using technologies I don’t approve of (Flutter), from companies I don’t trust (I don’t trust Google, which is different from how I despise Microsoft). I don’t care about subiquity and other things I shouldn’t care of; for a text or ncurses installer, there are choices even in Debian; otherwise, there’s nothing that cannot be fixed in Calamares, except that it can’t install systemd-boot, and that nobody loves systemd-boot, despite being much leaner than the abysmal rubbish that is GRUB2!

So Ubuntu MATE 21.04 could have been rated 10/10, but I’ll give it 8/10, because:

1. It installs essential and identity-defining packages from Snap Store, being them only three. People have ditched distros for less (I’m thinking of the anti-systemd cult.)

2. Thus, it enables snaps by default, with the risk of making many users install things they don’t want to have installed this way. Most conscientious users would add a PPA or would find another way of installing their preferred apps instead of resorting to snaps, Flatpaks, or AppImages. Luring the users into things they don’t want is vile, and I thought it’s only used by the likes of Microsoft.

A great soup, with a flea in the middle of the tasty contents. Would the chef assume the reality? Of course, the customer can’t have a saying regarding this free soup, and even if it weren’t free, leaders be leaders, and users be losers. But I just wanted to express my opinion, however useless and unable to change a thing it might be.

All the best,
Ludditus, long ago known as Béranger

✅ Initially, the reactions on the forum were decent, and Martin Wimpress himself didn’t intervene. At some point, I however felt I had to add this extra comment:

This is a reply to a post deleted by someone (why did they change their mind?!) and who suggested that snaps being enabled by default in Ubuntu, this is not an Ubuntu MATE specificity, and that I should remove snapd. But, should I remove (and purge) snapd, what would happen to ubuntu-mate-welcome, gtk-theme-yaru-mate, and icon-theme-yaru-mate, which are crucial to me, because they are part of what defines this distro? (They might remain installed though, right?)

The reason I don’t want snapd installed is simple: I don’t want snaps installed mistakenly and without even realizing it! When I search for an app, I want to see there’s no source for it, so I could go upstream and add the PPA (e.g. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:apandada1/foliate) from which I could get the proper package, dammit!

Everyone is educated here, so I can’t get what’s so difficult to understand why snapd shouldn’t be forced on people!

😕 Then, someone insisted that there was a rationale behind providing the three packages as snaps, and invited me to add a PPA to get them as packages from there! To which I replied:

What happened next? A private message from an idiot leader of Ubuntu MATE:

💢 Censorship, simply because I used the word “idiot” without naming anyone in particular! Snowflakes everywhere! I managed to add this:

Then the little Stalin closed my thread:

And he triggered an automated message, sent by the system as if it were by Martin Wimpress himself:

The thread I’ve been sent to, Likely developments in UM regarding snaps, was started by a guy who, like me, has started a single thread on the UM forums, to ask a question that bothered him the same way I’ve been bothered by the same snap-mania. In the times of Ubuntu MATE 20.10, which didn’t have a Yaru-MATE theme in the Snap Store, he started like this:

Over the past couple of years I have tried just about all of the top 40 or so distros (except OpenSuse which I’ve never been able to get to work) but have always come back to Ubuntu Mate. However, I’m not a fan of snaps. I have removed snap from UM and have lost AFAIK only the Welcome package (which I never use) and the Software Boutique (which I never found to be of any use).

Wow, 40 distros! That’s my man. Never happy, never satisfied with any of the crapola. After a while:

Thank you all very much for the answers.

Perhaps one could say is there a point in including snaps for just two applications when you can install snap yourself if you want to? Unless UM is buying into the snap philosophy. Snaps seem to be very controversial. The (small) poll here gave two thirds of respondents not wanting them in UM.

Sadly, time for more distro hopping perhaps?

To which…

UM is obviously «buying into the snap philosophy» since it’s an Ubuntu Flavour and as @lah7 reminded us, its project leader is the director of Ubuntu Desktop at Canonical and likes to try new stuff on his creation that is Ubuntu MATE.

Yeah. Martin Wimpress, which has somewhere two stickers with LINUX LUDDITES and who tricked people into thinking he leads MATE because he believes in things that work instead of experiments, later started Snapcraft, and he likes to use Ubuntu MATE’s user base to experiment with snaps on users! (You know, snaps are automatically updating, without asking the user, and there is no way to block a specific snap from updating!) A huge jerk IMO.

They didn’t try to persuade our OP of anything, nor to keep him in the so-called community:

If you like the MATE desktop and would like to hop, there’s Linux Mint MATE, OpenSUSE Leap/Tumbleweed with MATE, Manjaro MATE or Arch/Gentoo etc… let’s hope you find one that fills your needs in the end.

The “rationale” for having a few packages as snaps was this one, as put by Luke Horwell, the developer of Welcome and of Software Boutique:

Before, the user had to explicitly click a button to “subscribe for updates” (add the PPA) via either program, but new users might had missed it or misunderstood why. …

Official flavour policies may had influenced this too:

• PPAs cannot be pre-installed (possibly for security reasons)

• Updates to the package had to go through a SRU process.
That could take some time for someone at Ubuntu to review, but it could be rejected if it’s not a bug or qualified for updates.

…

Best wishes to you too @Algy, maybe we’ll see you hop by again. A few members stick around here even though they don’t use an Ubuntu implementation of MATE. Like I use Manjaro since rolling release works best for me!

Fuck me sideways! It was only “if not PPA packages, then snaps, but not official packages!”

If there isn’t a single person able to say “well, maybe we should try to integrate those 3 packages in the official repositories,” then something is fishy. Either a community is no community, or the Leaders are dictatorial, or nobody cares. But I won’t distro-hop to another distro that has MATE, because, dammit, no one integrates MATE as well as UM does. Probably I should invest some more time in assessing XFCE.

On the other hand, everything is a compromise everywhere, and any distro’s leaders are foredoomed to take some stupid decisions at some point. The so-called communities are merely collections of individuals each with his or her tunnel vision and no saying in the decision-taking process. But why am I expecting a friendly and rational community in Linux? Is there any Windows community where users can have their voices heard by the developers? Or in macOS, maybe? Of course not!

💔 The “community experiment” with Ubuntu MATE failed.

Linux Lite

Posted in Suggestions & Feedback, as Suggestions for Linux Lite 5.6 (starting from an unfair German review):

Hi, y’all!

I’ve met Linux Lite more than once in the past, yet I didn’t install it, despite it running very well as a live system. Maybe the fact that it’s always based on LTS to have played a role, LTS having its pros and its cons too.

Recently, I got angry at a stupid German review, because I felt it’s so wrong and biased against Linux Lite. The author, Michl Franken, has a site with contents that I consider almost useless and sometimes forced, meaning that it lures people to read the site to find the latest news, somewhat like OMG! Ubuntu! and 9to5Linux, but in German and with more original content. Here’s the culprit: Linux Lite 5.0 – „einfach – schnell – frei“ oder einfach sinnfrei? (Linux Lite 5.0 – “simple – fast – free” or simply pointless?)

The incompetent (you’ll see why I say that) and arrogant (because he posts thousands of nonsensical “articles” for getting traffic, just like the two aforementioned sites) reviewer has opinions that could be translated as follows:

«Overall, a workable desktop is delivered, but it lacks customization options and fine adjustments for individualization, especially for beginners.»

This is an idiocy. In which way is any other XFCE-based distro more customizable by the beginners?!

«The firewall configuration can only start, stop or show the status of the firewall. Where is the option to set rules here? Unfortunately, one does not cover oneself with fame here when Linux beginners are supposed to set FW rules via the terminal. GUFW as a helper solves this better.»

The guy is a moron, and I assume what I said. The Settings menu shows two firewall icons: “Firewall (Firewall Configuration)” which starts firewall-config in which everything can be configured, and “Firewall Config (Enable or Disable FirewallD)” which indeed can only start or stop the firewall through lite-firewallconfig. And unfortunately, the Settings Manager window only shows the second one, so the clumsy reviewer thought there’s no other tool available! Pathetic and misleading. Libelous, if you prefer.

«Linux Lite is an entry-level Linux distribution. But why I should install Linux Lite when I could install Debian, Ubuntu or Xubuntu or another distro with XFCE, unfortunately I do not understand. Don’t get me wrong, the approaches, especially with the documentation, are really very good. But do I have to create a separate Linux distribution for every little idea? I do not think so. Linux Lite undeniably has some very interesting incentives in the Lite Tools. If this could have been integrated into Xubuntu, it would probably have been better for everyone.»

The various Lite Tools, including the Lite Tweaks, are very welcome and a strong selling point, if I can use that verb.

«In my opinion, this also shows the negative dark side of the Linux land. Smaller distributions are created, some of which also pursue good ideas. But I think it is unlikely that these will ever become more widespread. There are already alternatives here that don’t make mistakes themselves.»

Which alternatives?! Is Xubuntu perfect as it is, or is this about a non-specified Xubuntu derivative? Confusing and void.

«So I come to the conclusion that Linux Lite is hardly worth recommending. Too few incentives to justify a separate distribution. In other words: What separates Debian and Ubuntu is missing here between Linux Lite and Xbubuntu. Furthermore, it is a mystery to me how this distro can take home 24th place on Distrowatch. Distrowatch is obviously not really representative, but it is a certain indicator.»

Nobody ever said Linux Lite is to Xubuntu what Ubuntu is to Debian! This guy is dishonest. To me, the major advantage and the main purpose of Linux Lite was to offer an out-of-the-box experience that’s familiar to users of Windows or KDE, with polishes and default settings that make a system fully usable right away (in contrast to “The N Things to Do After Installing Xubuntu”)! And, for the most of it, Linux Lite almost managed to achieve its objectives.

I would nonetheless come with my own critics and suggestions of improvement, hoping they’ll be taken for what they are. Some are based on the small customizations I’d do in either of the live session or the installed system, some are more or less bugs, and some are small annoyances.

1. I understand the main target are the beginners, but in Desktop Settings, Icons, I’d uncheck “Removable Devices.” You know, Windows and KDE don’t show the mounted devices on the desktop. And it can get cluttered. Many reviewers of XFCE criticize this default setting.

2. I’d also increase the icon size from 48 to 50 or better 52, to better accommodate longer labels.

3. In Thunar, I’d change the default view to Compact List, in which I’d definitely increase the icon size (zoom in once) so that the icons become blue instead of white. What’s the purpose of an icon theme if the icons aren’t themed in a file manager’s Compact and Detailed modes?

4. The handle on the panel is ugly and useless, I’d remove it (right click on it: Window Buttons, Properties, uncheck “Show Handle”).

5. The Settings Manager should include icons for both Firewall configuration and enable/disable tools (firewall-config and lite-firewallconfig)!

6. The Window Manager’s Style has a too small height of the title bar, and this cannot be changed. It’s maybe the only thing that breaks the otherwise nice and consistent theming. Usability can be improved e.g. by using a larger font, but the height of the title bar won’t increase.

7. The package lite-themes is actually improperly made, because it conflicts with adapta-gtk-theme, without specifically being marked so, therefore trying to install adapta-gtk-theme fails midway. Either the conflicts of LL’s package should properly be updated, or (much better) the themes it includes should be renamed (e.g. Adapta Lite, Adapta-Nokto Lite, etc.) so that the original themes could still be installed.

8. The same lite-themes has one more issue: it doesn’t only include the older, more limited set of Microsoft fonts offered by ttf-mscorefonts-installer, but also the Win7-Win10 exclusive fonts, which to my knowledge cannot be distributed. It’s not a patent issue, but a copyright one. One fix would be to split it in more packages, so that a lite-extra-fonts would include the legally challenged fonts. Even if preinstalled, this would be much better IMO.

9. Unlike other distros using a GTK-based DE, LL doesn’t bother to theme Qt5 apps. Try with a dark theme on something small, e.g. featherpad. The simplest fix (there are many others) would be to install qt5-gtk2-platformtheme and echo "export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=gtk2" >> ~/.profile, then logout and log in again. At a distro level, a better choice were to put this in /etc/skel/.profile. (If qt5ct were to be used, its options would be saved in ~/.config/qt5ct/qt5ct.conf, and in ~/.profile should either be nothing, or export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt5ct.) Not nice for a beginner to have the need to use a Qt5-based app and not to know how to make it look consistent with the rest of LL, especially with a dark theme.

10. The major usability issue in many XFCE themes, and unfortunately in LL too, is the difficulty to resize a window, because of a too thin resize margin. You’ll find here in the forum a question from 2017, still unanswered: “How do I increase the tolerance for window resizing with the mouse? It is difficult with a mouse and even more so with a laptop track-pad.” On Ask Ubuntu, from 2014, but still valid: “How do I increase the resize margin on windows? It takes me about 5 tries to resize a window on my computer. Is there a way to increase the resize margin on the edge of windows?” Most people don’t know they can use Alt+MiddleClick to resize! What I see in LL’s themes is that instead of metacity-theme-1.xml, there are metacity-theme-2.xml and metacity-theme-3.xml, and that metacity-theme-3.xml sets zero resize margins! (Look under frame_geometry name="normal" for distance names left_width, right_width, and bottom_height.) YMMV, but I cannot see how a null resize margin can be helpful to anyone!

11. Suppose one wants to install the yaru-gtk-theme (just the theme, not the icons!), because it’s warmer. Then they’ll notice the LL icon in the Whisker menu has a black background, not a transparent one, and it doesn’t fit aesthetically anymore (this is true for all LL tools in the Settings Manager). In my case, I had to change the panel button icon from xfce4-whiskermenu to desktop-environment-xfce.

And now, for an experiment: being based on 20.04 LTS, LL only has XFCE 4.14, not 4.16, thus lacking a few improvements, of which I like Thunar’s ability to pause a file transfer. I can see efforts to bring e.g. a newer xfce4-weather-plugin, which doesn’t require a newer XFCE, but I wanted to see if I could get XFCE 4.16 in LL 5.4.

My experiment was to add a PPA that provides XFCE 4.16 to a 20.04 LTS base containing 4.14, then a PPA that provides Warpinator, and a PPA that provides the e-book reader Foliate, and see how everything works!

It worked, and I shortly described the experience on my blog: Quick Experiment in “Improving” Linux Lite. There are some caveats, so it’s not for everyone, and it can obviously break at some point. But I’m using Linux since 1995, so I can’t be scared that easily.

These being said, is there any chance for some of my suggestions to trigger changes in Linux Lite 5.6?

All the best,
Ludditus, long ago known as Béranger

⚡ Before that post, I had some troubles with registering on their forum, and I ended up with two accounts. The reactions to my telling them about that weren’t great, with the “Platinum Level Poster” Trinidad Cruz (which is this guy, despite seemingly having the age of 71) giving me bullshit information and useless technical assistance.

😕 😞 The initial feedback from Jerry Bezencon, Linux Lite’s leader, is disappointing:

If you’ve been to our main website, I’m sure that you are aware that you are not in our target audience. This is the first and most important point to make as it determines how feedback is responded to for one.

The difference in feedback.

Experienced, people who have been in linux for a while – their feedback tends to lean on the side of personal preference. They’ve used linux long enough to be at a point where they are able to see from a certain view how ‘things could be better’ with a linux based OS.

‘Newbies’ new folk to linux – our target audience (exclusively) – Yes, were going to get people use Linux Lite, who have used linux for a long time. That’s unpreventable, and I’ve no objection to it, other than how they view the OS. Newbies feedback is of the utmost importance, because they are experiencing everything for the first time – first time use. There’s a complete and utter moron on Youtube who is a Debian fan-boy who does reviews and has done some of LL, none of which are accurate and therefore any feedback is completely ignored. His views are irrelevant because he is not in our target audience. He makes stupid points like ‘why are there the same shortcuts to folders in more than one place?’ Simple answer is that is how it is in Windows. We are not a Windows clone, but we need to give people who are transitioning, a similar UI experience, not the same, similar.

I’ll add more to this later, but you should be now I hope, at the very least be aware of who we are targeting. I recognise and thank you for your time and feedback, I have read it all and if any of it matches with existing ‘newbie’ feeback, I’ll certainly consider it for implementation. Cheers.

😿 To which I replied:

Jerry, thanks for the reply. Since we’re not trying to debate on the existence of God, could I use some old plain logic?

«If you’ve been to our main website, I’m sure that you are aware that you are not in our target audience. This is the first and most important point to make as it determines how feedback is responded to for one.»

This is, sorry to say, rude. Even if it’s your distro, even if it’s your work, even if your “customers” don’t pay you a dime, the feedback from the end-users should always be treated equally. If something is true, then it’s true. Such as a bug. When a package conflicts with another package, but it’s not declared as such, this is a bug, and a newbie couldn’t know it’s a bug, but I do.

«The difference in feedback.
Experienced people who have been in linux for a while – their feedback tends to lean on the side of personal preference. They’ve used linux long enough to be at a point where they are able to see from a certain view how ‘things could be better’ with a linux based OS.»

Experienced people, people who have been in software development for decades, people who have interacted with customers and end users, experienced professionals who are not just software developers, but who also know to collect feedback from users, and understand ergonomics and human factors could provide you much more useful feedback than Joe Sixpack who doesn’t know how to use a wired mouse.

«Newbies feedback is of the utmost importance, because they are experiencing everything for the first time – first time use.»

Yes, but if you only value their feedback, you won’t fix much.

«There’s a complete and utter moron on Youtube who is a Debian fan-boy who does reviews and has done some of LL, none of which are accurate and therefore any feedback is completely ignored. His views are irrelevant because he is not in our target audience.»

There is a logical contradiction here. Which one is true?
1. His views are ignored because he’s a moron and his reviews are inaccurate.
2. His views are ignored because he’s not in LL’s target audience.
The second one is not fair play.

«if any of it matches with existing ‘newbie’ feeback, I’ll certainly consider it for implementation. Cheers.»

With all due respect, this is a fallacious approach. Most newbies don’t even know what they miss, what they’d like, what they see, when they see a bug. They might even not know that some option exists! How could they complain when they don’t know what this collection of software can or could do for them?
I presented you, that’s true, some personal preferences. But maybe 80% of the time, 70% of users prefer the Compact List in a file manager, and only use Icon View for pictures. Also, for when someone changes to Compact or Details (most people would eventually do it at some point) and they see white icons instead of themed icons because they’re too small, why not changing the defaults as long as it would help them?
Finally, if there are two firewall configuration tools in the menu, but the user only sees one in the Settings window, how is this not a bug? That stupid German is the proof that the best thing to do is to fix this instead of saying, “oh, the feedback is not coming from the right people!”

If we have had designed products only based on the feedback from the users, we’d have had hybrid horse-driven automobiles.

Let’s agree we are incompatible in the way we see the management of a software project, of a software product, of a software brand, of a software market, and of a community of users and, before you kick me out, to part here. I am not welcome in this community, I leave.

All the best.

Then, Jerry was still calm and fair:

Why would I kick you out? You’re welcome to express your opinions.

Yeah, sure. To be presented with “but your opinions don’t count, as you’re not in our target audience.”

Other users have shown me I was right not to continue in their community:

First of all, I think you started with the wrong foot with your approach. This is not the way to address such things. I’ve too seen stuff I believe could be improved, but then I don’t start a thread in the forum for everyone to see just for showing off, instead, I opt to PM the Lite team and let them know my observations, then it’s up to them whether they take it into account.

And the Trinidad Cruz guy, the typical American douchebag:

Perhaps a somewhat remarkable example of a rather unremarkable probably even unfortunate person’s attempt at satire. One can definitely sense the need for deep therapy, or at the least a cry for help in this encounter. In a literary sense it’s difficult to believe that English is his first language, which would allow me to forgive the lack of vocabulary and logical construction in his discourse, but there is too much post-structuralist patois and logic in his feigned personal method of attack. Sadly he is a dilettante resorting to circularity when cornered. He suffers from a “craving to be famous” and “a horror of being known to like being known”.

/2021/05/26/how-the-internet-age-bent-some-peoples-minds/
Including his own.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire

The clearest critic of his ramblings and rants is his own self-immolating opinion. It maybe that the person has become the avatar in this case, while the original self struggles through the wasteland that such a vanity created.

But who said English was my first language?! Trinidad Cruz didn’t notice my flag says Germany, the same way he didn’t notice he was telling me to use a menu option that was only available to the administrators! And he cannot say, “sorry, I forgot that option has been deactivated for regular users.”

💔 The “community experiment” with Linux Lite failed.

Closing line

If such forums were for people like me, we would have found people such as Dedoimedo on various forums, not only on his blog, a blog where he doesn’t accept comments.

I’m older than him, I should have known better.