Hi, On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 04:57:43PM +0100, Joe wrote: > OK, but take it further: these people who are not using email, are > they actually likely to use a real computer for anything at all other > than playing games? Their communication will be carried out using the > mobile phone permanently glued to their hand, and they will not give a > damn what operating system their computer or console uses, as long as > it plays the right games.
Maybe you are using this dismissive tone because you don't believe my assertion that these people exist and are the future, so you think you are being dismissive only with me. If you do admit the possibility that such people exist though, then again I would suggest that being dismissive towards them like this isn't very welcoming and can be part of the reason why they don't choose to use email collaboratively. They have choices about where to be and will choose to be places that don't talk to/about them like that. You could have just said, "I don't believe that there are people using Linux computers for real creative work that do not use email." It's my experience that there are lots of people using computers for real, creative work — not just passive entertainment and social purposes — that don't like using email. They might be a larger demographic than the alternative. > Someone who uses a real computer, who exchanges files from office > applications or 3D CAD, for example, will send them to friends or > colleagues by email, as transferring to mobile phone to send them using > WhatsApp is extremely cumbersome. The first thing I would say is that there are a lot of options for file transfer that don't involve attaching them to an email. These options are generally app-based and the app exists both on the phone and by web browser for desktop use. They are things like Dropbox and other cloud storage providers that are more or less ubiquitous these days. These are the types of things that I see younger computer users going for. The second thing I would say is that even when a person does find email is the lowest common denominator for file transfer, that doesn't strike me as participation in any sort of community. At best I would say that's transactional and then the person gets back to whatever they were doing. > We're talking in this thread about people potentially interested in > Debian, as opposed to Windows or other Linux distros. I'm suggesting > that all these people will be comfortable with email, mailing lists and > other computer-based communications. If they're not, they are unlikely > to have even heard of Linux and would have no possible use for it. GitHub has 100 million active accounts that are creating software, and don't use email to do it. I don't understand where the idea that creative work requires email collaboration comes from. There's millions of vibrant projects organising solely in GitHub issues. I don't think GitHub is a healthy environment and I'm sad that it dominates in much the same way as Meta and X dominate social networking, but GitHub exists and a vast number of people use it for creative endeavours. People like the convenience and it is possible to have it without all of the negatives. You're making an argument here that Debian is not actually for people who don't like email and I question whether that is good for the prospective users or even good for Debian itself. It doesn't massively matter though as FOSS will continue even if Debian allows itself to stagnate out of existence. Thanks, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
