You Don’t Own the Word “Freedom”: A Full-Burn Response to the GNU/Linux Comment That Tried to Gatekeep Me Off My Own Machine

A line-by-line teardown of the most smug, exclusionary comment I’ve gotten since starting this blog—and why the so-called “freedom” they preach looks a lot more like a wall.

I woke up this morning to a comment on the first post in the 'I Want to Love Linux' series. Congratulations, random internet user: you earned a full-length blog post in response. Not because you're special, but because your comment is the perfect storm of everything that’s wrong with the self-righteous, gatekeeping corner of this ecosystem—the part that cloaks cruelty in the language of freedom, then acts shocked when people stop showing up.

Here’s their full comment. Nothing redacted. No paraphrasing. Just the original smug sermon.

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Okay, first of all, it’s GNU/Linux, not “Linux.”

Ah yes, the sacred GNU/. As if the word “GNU” fixes the system’s failures. Screen reader broken? Audio stack crashed? Don’t worry, it’s GNU/Linux now, all is forgiven! You think a naming convention is more important than disabled users being able to log in. That says everything about where your priorities lie.

You keep saying “Linux” like it’s some magic OS that fell from the sky, when in reality it’s just the kernel.

And you keep pretending that pointing this out changes anything. It’s a kernel. Great. The problem isn’t confusion over definitions—it’s the lived experience of people getting left behind while you argue semantics and act superior.

The real operating system—the one that gives you your shells, your coreutils, your compilers, your sanity—is the GNU system.

Sanity? If your idea of sanity is the same duct-taped command line environment we’ve been dragging around for decades, I’d hate to see your definition of chaos. And don’t start waving compilers in my face like they’re an accessibility feature. Most of the stack that matters now isn’t even part of GNU.

By not calling it GNU/Linux, you’re erasing the work of decades of free software pioneers who fought tooth and nail so you could sit there whining about things not being shiny enough.

No. I’m calling out that those decades of work are now guarded by gatekeepers who’d rather pick fights over phrasing than fix the fact that their holy ecosystem can’t reliably deliver speech at boot. I’m not whining. I’m pointing at a wall you built and saying, "Some of us can’t climb this anymore."

You sound like the kind of person who installs Arch and then blogs about how hard it is to use a terminal.

You sound like the kind of person who thinks using Arch makes you a war hero. I used Arch without sight, on real machines, with broken speech and no fallback. I didn’t blog about how hard the terminal was. I blogged about how no one should be forced into that corner just to exist.

News flash: it’s not hard—you’re just lazy.

Lazy is a hell of a word to throw at someone who spent years cleaning up messes that upstream refused to even acknowledge. I’ve written patches, rebuilt systems from bare shells, filed bugs no one else wanted to touch. I’ve put in more effort in a single sleepless night than your entire comment thread combined.

Second, the whole “Linux isn’t built for people” line? Give me a break.

No. You don’t get a break. Not from the criticism, not from the fallout, not from the consequences of pretending Linux is something it’s not. If Linux was built for people, you wouldn’t be this defensive about someone pointing out that it’s failing real humans.

You want an OS that’s “built for people”? What people? Consumers? Passive clickers?

Yes. The people who aren’t you. The ones you chase off. The ones you mock for needing stability, usability, accessibility. You treat compassion like contamination. That’s not freedom. That’s a fortress.

People who treat a computer like a Netflix vending machine?

You mean people who just want their machine to work? Who want access to knowledge, tools, community—without needing a comp-sci degree and Stockholm syndrome? Those people? Yeah. Those are still people. They matter.

GNU/Linux isn’t built for users the way Apple or Microsoft defines users—as data sources for ads, or potential subscribers to whatever crapware-as-a-service model they’re shoving this fiscal quarter.

You can keep your smug purity fantasy. Apple and Microsoft may be flawed, but at least they write software that doesn’t tell blind users to fuck off by default. Your system breaks and then sneers at the person holding the pieces.

GNU/Linux is built for users in the sense of users who use their brains.

No, it’s built for users who already speak the secret language. You don’t want smart users. You want survivors. And when someone finally burns out, you call them weak and throw a party.

If you're allergic to learning, maybe this ecosystem isn’t for you—and that’s fine, just stop trying to dumb it down for the rest of us.

I’ve learned more than you could handle. I learned while blind, unsupported, and constantly told I didn’t belong. You say “dumbing it down” like accessibility is stupidity. It’s not. It’s humanity. Something you clearly struggle with.

You’re mad because you don’t “feel welcomed”?

I’m mad because I did the work, paid the cost, and still got treated like a liability. I’m mad because I kept trying, and all you ever offered was disdain.

Look, freedom isn’t about making you feel hugged while your system silently phones home and installs DRM.

Freedom is also not telling disabled users to go fuck themselves because they asked for a working login prompt. It’s not freedom if it requires you to be perfect, sighted, fluent in C, and emotionally bulletproof.

GNU/Linux is about you owning your machine.

Then why do I have to reassert that ownership every time a package breaks accessibility?

It’s about writing a shell script to replace some bloated GUI monstrosity because you can.

No. It’s about having no choice, because the GUI crashes if you breathe near it and nobody fixes it. Don’t confuse necessity for empowerment. If this is power, it’s the kind you bleed for.

It’s about reading the manual and understanding your stack, not begging for some dev to “just make it work like macOS.”

We’re not begging. We’re demanding accountability. macOS doesn’t make you beg for access. It delivers it. Linux makes you fight tooth and nail for basic dignity—then spits on you when you lose.

You’re not being excluded—you’re being challenged.

You know who says that? Bullies. This isn’t a challenge. It’s a chokehold. You don't care if people rise to it. You just want to see who fails.

If you don't like that, maybe stick to using ChromeOS with your Google account tethered to every bodily function.

And there it is. The final insult. When you run out of arguments, you shove people out the airlock. If someone asks for basic usability, you call them a traitor and point at the door. No one’s fooled.

And don’t think I didn’t notice you never once mentioned freedom in your post. Not even once. Not a single nod to software freedom, user control, or the social contract behind all this code.

I didn’t mention freedom because I’m living the consequences of what you call it. Because in your world, freedom is something you shout about while trampling the people it forgot.

That tells me everything I need to know.

Let me tell you something back: you didn’t come here to help. You came here to sneer, to dominate, to protect the myth that this system is fine. It’s not. And no amount of chest-thumping will hide that.

You think this is about convenience, when it’s really about liberation.

Liberation that excludes people is just gatekeeping with a mask. If you want to call it freedom, then build a system that doesn’t slam the door on the people who need it most.

This isn’t about your fonts not rendering or your Wi-Fi card needing a firmware blob.

You’re damn right it isn’t. It’s about not being able to use the system at all. It’s about being locked out by silence, by broken accessibility, by upstream apathy and comments like this.

This is about you refusing to confront the responsibilities of being in control.

I did take responsibility. For years. For others. I gave everything I had to make this system better. And I’m done carrying it for people like you.

You want GNU/Linux to “love you back”? That’s not how this works.

That’s the problem. It should be. Community should matter. Mutual respect should mean something. Without that, this isn’t a movement—it’s a mausoleum.

GNU/Linux isn’t Trump, trying to flatter you while stabbing you in the back.

It’s worse. It stabs you and demands thanks.

It’s not some product that wants to manipulate your emotions to get you to upgrade.

It manipulates your guilt. It burns your time. And when you break, it forgets you ever existed.

It’s a tool, and it assumes you’re smart enough to wield it.

And when someone is smart enough—but blind, or disabled, or just different—you slam the door shut anyway.

If you want love, get a dog.

I did. She listens. She learns. She helps. She never blamed me for needing help. She never told me I didn’t belong.

You could learn a lot from her.

If you want freedom, open a terminal.

I did.

I lived there.

I fought in that terminal. I fixed things no one else would. And I stayed longer than I should have.

But I’m not asking for permission anymore.

And I’m not letting people like you define freedom ever again.