I imagine most Linux communities have half a dozen or so online users, at any given time, just refreshing the New Posts section waiting to fix someone's problem and blow their mind.

Yeah, i had a similar experience. I was messing around with a small Media Center/NAS hybrid running Debian, and it really, really wasn't happy with the integrated GPU of the AMD A4 i was using, causing instability and tons of graphical glitches especially in video playback, which were not acceptable on a potential media center. My attempts to get help from the community as a linux noob that did not even have enough knowledge to know what commands i could use to get relevant information to add to my cry for help got me a lot of harsh replies before someone was nice enough two days later to help me out. We got it fixed together after a few rounds of replies, but my first impression was not very good.

Nowadays there are so many online resources available, and support boards often have basic information available about what information should be attached and HOW TO GET IT, which reduces friction a lot, and also makes the community a lot more accessible for new users.

Not at all my experience, I started using Linux in 2005, and Ubuntu was part of an explosion in available help for new users,
but also many smaller distros had it, like for instance PC Linux which I think back on fondly.
Beginner friendly distros was as much a thing back then as it is today.
The biggest difference is more that Linux has become better, and some things are a lot easier today.
Even Arch has an easy installer now!

What gets me is when I search for the solution to the Resistance 2 installation issue on Ecosia, the gamfaqs snobs are like you’re new we can’t help.

Because otherwise you don't have the "true linux experience", whatever that means.

I work in IT support, and you can't imagine how completely computer inept the average user is. Like, they start crying when a button has moved 2cm to the side.

These will never be able to use a command line, let alone install their own operating system.

Yet some of these Linux evangelicals think everyone was born with a UTP cable up their arse. So they recommend what they see as "easy", but don't understand that it only looks easy to them because of the decades of experience they already had.

As long as the Linux community can not decide what distro is the best for newbies, it will never be the year of the linux.

because it's pretty hard to recommend anything you don't use. Seeking advice on a distribution in geek forums, therefore, is a losing plan right from the start. It's smarter to install whatever you want and then come to the forums with your problems.

looks like they've already found one mouse!

people would tell you to RTFM if your question was answered anywhere in the documentation

Modern day internet techies will snear at you for using AI assist tools when setting up an environment. But by god, do these agents not save me endless hours of trying to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls of system configuration.

RTFM only works when the documentation is high quality and easy to follow. Better yet, if you know the manual so well, just link me to the damned chapter I'm supposed to focus in on. I'm trying to set up an *arr stack, not become a sysadmin team lead at a Fortune 500 company.

Never mind DMAs and IRQs, you had to manually write config files specifying the geometry and refresh rate of your monitor.

In fairness, a lot of those config files were relatively easy to write. I'll take that over hunting through forty different nearly-identical screens in a custom configured BIOS.

Later you had to uninstall pulse audio so sound worked. And recompile WIFI drivers with every Kernel update. Today though I can very much relate I don't want my OS to need more attention than maybe rebooting for updates once a month. That's what made macOS successful. Linux Desktop has become usable in that regard, now even vsync sometimes works.

you had to manually write config files specifying the geometry and refresh rate of your monitor.

Ahhh that brings me back to 2005 and my first time installing gentoo

There is a solution. Tell a person the answer to their question while also calling into question if they actually need what they are asking for. This cat wants to start hunting Mice. So that could go something like, "It's great that you're getting into hunting. Mice are an excellent place to start if you're a house cat. Have you tried waiting outside of their hole? When I hunt elk, I creep up slowly on them when they are unaware. Mice are quite small game, but this might work for them too. Have you considered hunting elk?"

When I wanted to write my own game engine in 2015, people just directed me to Unity. Some people even said that unless I want to work for some company that actually develops the engines, I don't need to learn API or anything like that. It took a while to people to point me in the direction of SDL for input and displaying a framebuffer (back then I used CPU rendering, as almost no one cared about pixel alignment, hence why my engine is called PixelPerfectEngine).

Tbf hyaenas do a lot of their own hunting. I believe I've read that lions more often pillage from hyaenas than vice versa.

Down with lion propaganda, I say!