Egee.io Ain't a Linux Community (Patreon)

There's a common misconception that Egee.io is some kind of Linux community. This is most likely due to the fact that Egee io is a quasi fan-community that sprung up around my channel during a big Minecraft event I did almost 3 years ago.

Truth is, the original idea behind Egee io (primarily the website) was to be a place newbies could go to find cool Linux distribution that our "community" agreed upon. Originally when we (me and 3 other Linux community members) started the idea, we had a list of distros we wanted to promote.

I eventually decided against the idea because right when we were ready to make the website public, somebody else unveiled a website almost exactly like it (but better in pretty much every way). Curiously, that website isn't around anymore, so maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all 😏.

Anyway, the reason why I'm writing this is because last week we changed how we do moderation and server admin stuff in the community, and I let two of our founding admins go. The direction of the community has changed substantially over the past couple years and did not necessitate having two extra admins with very different views for the community.

At this point in time, I'm the only Linux user in our Discord admin group.

The Egee.io community has grown from a weird little Linux YouTube fan community into a fully fledged gaming community. And as we grow, our Linux user population continues to shrink. Roughly 3/4 of our active users (those who talk in the channels and or play on our servers) are Windows users (gamers).

And Linux users aren't just being displaced by new Windows users. They often leave because they disagree with them or the moderators. The Linux users often bring up Linux related topics in general chat (which is annoying because only 1/4 of the community is interested) so they are asked to go to our tech-talk channel. This is occasionally enough to cause Linux users to leave. Other times, Linux users argue with people discussing non-Linux games, again often resulting in them leaving the community.

It's been an interesting trip seeing the community evolve. I have to admit, seeing the way Linux users behave on the Discord has decreased my respect for the Linux community in general. Its true, Linux users are often the most active but often times they are also most toxic.