Debian, Arch, Fedora, Mint, Ubuntu, Redhat, Manjaro all have docs and wiki on their primary websites. Slackware has docs, Gentoo has a wiki. Anything that's not on a distro's site needs to be carefully considered before tampering. Almost all of those distros have a warning in their installation instructions to only listen to the information in their docs and wiki, and to a lesser extent their forums. Hell, even nosystemd.org tells you what systemd is, what it's for, what replacements there are, and the proper way to get rid of it in bold text under the header "How do I get rid of systemd?"

Listening to hackneyed advice from unvetted sources just because they have strong opinions is a problem that any and every computer will face. That's not a problem with linux anymore than the hoardes of trolls on random social media sites telling you to "delete System32" is a problem with Windows.

I want Linux to be customizable AND safe. But safe in the way that someone takes the time to learn how what they plan to do will effect their system, not safe in the sense of "impossible to bork"

As for elitism: if it's "elitist" to indirectly poke fun of someone who deleted a core system component without understanding what it does without a backup, then so be it. It feels more like that word is levied by people whose ego is too big to take respobsibility for the mistakes they made, and instead blame others for laughing when it bites them in the ass.

Idk where these swaths of elitists that refuse to help are. OOP went to stackexchange and likely got a helpful answer complete with explanations, as that is the community standard. Over on !linux@lemmy.ml , I see people offering help with problems all the time without shitting on them. If I go to the aforementioned OS forums, or really any software-specific forums, I see people helping or pointing people to where they can get help.

And I'm not denying that assholes who say shit like "did you even bother googling?" exist. They're nasty people with no patience, but they're by no means the community standard unless they're the only ones you pay attention to...

Or unless you see a screenshot of a question from a different website posted in a meme-sharing forum and expect the comments to offer advice, instead of laughing at the person who shot themselves in the foot and went to a hospital instead of seeking help at the DNC HQ

The cultural elitism comes from years of tinkering with their system since all the information they can find is fragmented and spread around, highly opinionated,’poorly digestible, out of date, and often dangerous.

I feel this in my soul, except about Windows. I've got a handful of machines at work that refuse to update to Windows 10 22H2. They give an error code during the compatibility check. Googling that error code returns dozens of forum posts with hundreds of users and "Microsoft support agents" chiming in. They give the same list of suggestions—that don't work—to fix it. Nobody can say what the error code means, or what the compatibility check checks. The official Microsoft fix is to reinstall.

I don't want to reinstall. The suite of software these computers run would take several hours to reinstall.

This is typical of my experience with Windows. (I'm a Unix/Linux guy.) I look up how to do something in Windows, and with the official Microsoft documentation, one of three things inevitably happens:

1. I follow the steps and click the things, and it still doesn't work.
2. I can't follow the steps because one of the things to click is greyed out for some reason.
3. I can't follow the steps because the documentation refers to an older edition, and Microsoft has removed one of the things to click.

One time, when trying to get Excel to run a mail merge, I ran into all three problems in three attempts.

The same happens with 3rd party sites. They never say the edition of Windows to which their guide refers, and the feature is deprecated or gone. (Most recently it was about getting a Windows 10 start menu behavior back on 11.)

Oh, and since Windows is mainstream, a lot of the information is in the form of AI vomit, and covered in ads and dark patterns.

To be fair, Windows and Macos support is like this too. Its random forum suggestions from even less technical people.

The distros official resources are comprehensive and don't have the issue of being outdated and fragmented.

Except the principles behind linux aren't "being able to customize however you want", that's the principle behind certain distros like Arch. Linux is about being free and open-source, so nobody is beholden to a single entity making sweeping changes that are bad for the community but good for their bottom line.

that they found the wrong information because they have literally no idea what's good or bad, instead of helping, they get shit on.

I don't think anyone's seriously shitting on nooby mistakes, because everyone has done something stupid like that and learned a lesson from it. It's kind of a "cute noob" moment

This isn't a Linux problem this is a society problem people just want to one up everyone In anyway they can and sometimes I dont think we do it consciencely

Can confirm I am a Linux lurker who would love to learn all this cool shit but right now I don't have the time/mental fortitude to wade through all the bullshit and experiment. I already do that enough with power platform at work and I know that I know nothing. It's exhilarating and tiresome. It would be great if we could have some "training wheels" type of community on here to help new users out.