I’ve been doing the OverTheWire Bandit over the past couple of days and have become stuck on the earlier levels. I deem this very embarrassing as this is supposed to be an “easy” and “recommended for beginners” type of puzzle that requires hands on understanding of the Linux terminal. But I have been using Linux for 9 months now, I wouldn’t do the most complicated things (other than break my whole os) only the things required to make my overall user experience somewhat enjoyable. Now this makes me very sad to come to the conclusions that I may be below the average Linux beginner which I didn’t know was possible according to my knowledge. I am only asking of tips and tricks to these puzzles and maybe to positive reinforcement to make feel better about myself. Now I will not tolerate spoilers as in the official rules of OverTheWire clearly states, and I hope you will follow this rule for the better sake of my learning and understanding of the Linux terminal ( and for the sake of the game itself)
Why? Genuinely interested.
Well, I admit I’m being a little facetious.
But that fact that “normie” users have zero tolerance for friction is a real problem. If you can’t do anything that’s not spoonfed to you, then you are prey for corporate abuse. The only people who really care about minimizing friction are the people trying to exploit “normies” for profit. Most open-source software is built to solve problems that are more important than “how can we exploit the general population a little more effectively?”
I don’t think the solution here is for every single open-source project to devote a large percentage of their time and resources to eliminating friction. That would be a huge drain on teams that have more important things to do.
Rather, the solution is for users to be willing to spend a few seconds here and there to understand what they’re doing and what their options are.
I think there is some pride and value in setting things up in a way that reduces friction.
I myself am of a similar opinion tho. Someone maintaining a thing as a hobby doesn’t owe me shit. If it’s too tedious to figure out, I’ll move to another solution. It’s really nice, when I get the option of a consumable bundle. But if they can’t, don’t like or simply don’t care for ease of consumption — tough luck for me I guess.
tl;dr