As a linux user, it's so weird seeing mac and windows people get excited about updates.

Our updates just break things, in order to get a new sound effect or icon we have to spend 6 hours manually recompiling the kernel

"ooh it has a new sound when I add stuff to trash!"

So does mine. But I have to install it, then spend 3 hours in .conf files before recompiling the kernel.

But I can change it whenever, not just when an update comes out.

"ooh pretty new icons"

I can change my icons whenever I want as long as I have 4 hours free time to manually fix the audio suddenly not working after changing them.

As a linux user I can change the way anything on my computer works, at any time. Each and every change no matter how small takes the same 6 hours of yakshaving.

Listen buddy. I have dozens of windows managers I can choose from that'll completely change how the UI looks and acts, and I can switch them *whenever* I have a day to fix bugs and then submit a pull request.

Essential to the linux philosophy is that everything is made of separate, interchangeable programs that are all equally broken.

I can change how the mouse moves separately from how windows behave, and both are broken in different ways.

In linux, there is no comprehensive, monolithic update that changes everything at once.

You simply juggle various isolated broken things until it looks and acts the way you want, while still being fractally broken.

This is a powerful design philosophy. It means I am 6 hours, several inexplicable bugs, and several even more inexplicable bug fixes, from making it do anything I want.

If I want to run a tiling window manager that uses keyboard shortcuts instead of the mouse, I have 300 options to choose from that are all broken in different ways.

If I choose one written in haskell, I can, for instance, get it to work by simply reinstalling ruby for some reason, unplugging then replugging a mouse, sacrificing a goat, then fixing a typo in a shell I don't use.

Maybe I choose one of the 256 written in a lisp.

All I need to do is summon the spirit of John McCarthy in an eldritch ceremony, slay a goblin with a sharpened parenthesis, then resurrect a dialect of lisp no one has touched in 56 years.

Say I wish to change the system font.

Well, I simply need to travel back in time, kidnap Steve Irwin, and have him help me dive into the deadly swamps in search of a mutated tiff bug

The true power of linux is that if your free time is worthless enough, and you have enough goats to sacrifice, everything can be changed at any time.

No other operating system assumes you can afford to spend a whole day tinkering about to change your screensaver.

Windows and Mac both assume, carelessly, that your time is valuable.

What if it's not? What if you can afford to spend a weekend getting your mp3's to play because changing your wallpaper broke your mp3 codec? What then?

As a linux user, it is reassuring to know my operating system doesn't expect too much of me.

It knows I'm not going to be curing cancer today. It knows I have time to fuck about in the bowels of a makefile to fix my music player after updating my web browser breaks python.

It is reassuring when your operating system knows you are going to fix a broken dependency by installing 6 different versions of the same program, changing 2 characters on each of 18 different conf files, then closing firefox and reopening it 3 times.