The least happy computer users: Those running Arch Linux & Firefox

It looks like it's about doing real work instead of tweaking your distro 🫠

İgnorance is bliss

So of the three happiest distros, two aren't very concerned with mainstream appeal and will carry on contentedly doing their thing while ignoring rankings like this. Sounds about right.

These results seem freaking bizarre and I'm highly skeptical. You're telling me that Slackware users, freaking SLACKWARE, are the happiest? And Firefox is the least happy? I am so much happier using Firefox than have been with Chrome for at least a decade.

The question wasn't how happy users are with their distro, but in general. My theory is, people who have a lot of great things going on in their life (wife, kids, social life) don't bother installing Arch.
- Wow, no need to make this personal. /s

Haha silly Manjaro users, only 6.83 happy while I am 6.93 happy as a Debian user. My Linux knowledge is clearly superior to most, not counting those excessively happy freaks running Slackware.

Correlation vs. causality!?

Exactly what I was thinking. "People who are already less happy tend to gravitate towards Firefox" is as valid a takeaway from those graphs as anything else. (Also, where are all the other browsers? I'd expect Edge and Safari, at least, to be represented, even if Vivaldi and various Firefox forks were not.)

Let's go Pop!_OS! We're #2! We're #2!

Coming for #1 baby
- That will happen after the stable release of cosmic de

I'm immensely sceptical of anything that comes from Lunduke.

I don't really know what happened to him but he went kinda nuts.

Nicco Loves Linux made a pretty interesting video on him a month-ish ago. You might enjoy it if you've known Lunduke since when he was still nice.

Edit: Link to the video
- This seemed interesting to me, so I prepared a cup of tea, sat down to watch, then quickly realised I've already seen this before, oops 😅
  
  Thanks for the link regardless, I'm sure others are seeing it for the first time
Yeah, he was already on a weird path but after Covid he went down really hard.
I hope he will seek help and get better

This is one of those correlation != causation things, hm?

It might be more a case of the "average" Arch user being more sensitive to small quirks/bugs or certain defaults. Arch is at least comparatively unbiased, which might be why these users pick Arch in the first place.

I would personally agree with where Arch is because I prefer a distribution that mostly works out of the box and already made a lot of the decisions for me that I don't want to be bothered with. I do still customize quite a few elements to my (sometimes very specific) liking, but I also like that I don't have to do anything when it comes to configuring my disk layout, or configuring zram, or install and configure fwupd or other packages that kind of just make sense to have.

But I don't really see why Arch users can't be as happy with their choice as I am with mine, unless the only reason they "use Arch btw" is that they think that's unironically something to brag about (or peer pressure, but that shouldn't be a thing I hope).

This is just fun with statistics. I don't think your Linux distro has a big impact on your overall happiness in life, but of course you can order the results by any parameter you like.
Often, it's a third factor that influences both, in this case probably age, which influences happiness and distro choice.
Or maybe having the time and inclination to install Arch correlates with being in a bad place in your life right now.
I know I was tinkering with Linux all day when I was procrastinating and locked away in my room for days.
- having the time and inclination to install Arch correlates with being in a bad place in your life right now.
  
  True for me. I'm using Arch because I don't have a system that can run Gentoo ;P
  
  Actually I've oscillated between the two for many years. Every few years I switch to the other one and enjoy it for a few. ... Only, now I'm stuck on a laptop that would melt if I tried to put Gentoo on it v.v I hope some day I will have a real computer again v.v Among other things 😅 😞
- in this case probably age
  
  Arch: for the young'uns with some fire left in them that just discovered open source and want to stick it to M$ and show off in front of friends.
  
  Debian: When those people grow up and start having to do actual work on their computers...
  
  I went through that cycle over the last 25 years. Thought I was hot shit running Slackware on a ThinkPad 380 when all my friends were on Windows 98. Then I got better things to do than running configure scripts all day and tweaking the UI yet again.

lunduke

Oh. bye 👋

Bryan „trans people choosing pronouns is like the Picard 4 lights torture scene” Lunduke
I'm ootl I think, what did he do?
- Take a look at this.

The real data point here is that Skackware users are happy.

I suspect it's because they've mastered the art of not giving a fuck.

Yeah, that's pretty spot on.

Such polls / surveys are extremely questionable. I wouldn't even know what rating to give, if someone asks me how happy I am. This is a dumb question to ask to begin with. Let alone everyone has a different standard to what 10/10 or 5/10 means. And then only 6000 (+ some) have been taken part.

I can't believe this was a real poll / survey.

also it's reported on by lunduke so it should be immediately discarded
Also the graph is pretty much zoomed in. It exaggerates the differences between the bars.
That was the longest "I am using arch btw" I have ever seen. And while I am on the topic, I am using arch btw.
- Not exactly, I use EndeavourOS, almost Arch. But I use Firefox, BTW. I was more unhappy when I used Ubuntu and even more when I was using Windows before this. No idea what rating to give though. What even is 8/10 happiness??
The following data was obtained from polling done between January 22nd and February 9th, 2023. A few details about the polling conducted:
6,022 people answered the questions.
This is significantly larger than the vast majority of national polls conducted during Presidential Elections in the USA (most of which have less than 2,000 respondents).
The poll was presented to audiences of several shows and news sites in order to obtain a large, diverse sample of computer nerds.
The questions were wide-ranging, 100% optional, and no personal data was collected.

Let’s start from a very high level:
6,022 computer nerds & enthusiasts were asked the following simple question: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy would you say you are (in general)?”
- You can't compare to the President Elections in the USA. The answers are very serious and with a huge impact, so people will choose wisely. And they are complete randoms. Compared to the question to nerds how happy they are in a rating between 1 and 10 and then connecting the happiness to the operating system they are using. It's like asking how happy people are and then connecting this to the current president. Who said other factors didn't play a role?
- In polls the demographics of the participants are selected so they are statistically significant.
  
  When you poll visitors to a website there's no telling what biases might be at work. For example, Arch is a popular distribution so its prevalence in the results could simply be an indicator of that.
  
  Last but not least, correlation does not necessarily mean causation, and that goes especially for an uncontrolled sample. There's a famous example that says "100% of the people who drink water die after that".
You can just take it for what it is: How people respond when asked to grade their happiness from 1 to 10. Of course it's subjective, but it's interesting that arch users rate their happiness lower overall.
- I think its bullshit. There is no way of verifying if this is bullshit or not.
@thingsiplay @superkret Here! Here!

That's strange, apart from installing it, Arch is pretty painless to run if you're not careless

You're assuming that Arch causes the unhappiness. Maybe unhappy people naturally tend to use Arch, so as to avoid further pain from painful distros like Pop! OS?.
- Oh shit, I was miserable back when I installed Arch. Dang, you might be onto something there!

I wonder if Arch makes people unhappy or if unhappy people chose Arch.

Probably the latter. I've been a two or three on the scale since before I used Arch or Firefox.
Looking at the distro/happiness graph, it's probably an age thing.
Younger computer users are less happy.

I use Arch! How dare you say that I am unhappy? I am frothing at my mouth! I am totally happy, can't you see that? CAN'T YOU SEE THAT???

Looks like I need to consider flipping back to Debian again... it's always beeen a Stable relationship...

@superkret But where is nixos?

Under 6 😜
- @filister Above 7.5 and in right side of graph (not in picture) 😅😂

The unhappiest people always want to tell you how to live your life.

Because they don't want you to make the same mistake.

That's why I use Arch but avoid Firefox. Balance is the key.

What would you recommend instead of Firefox?
- I'm done recommending stuff, because my use case is not necessarily your use case. I can only tell you that Brave is the sweet spot for me, at the moment.

I guess the nixos users were all too busy asking everyone if they've heard of nixos to answer the survey?

BTW have you heard of nixos?

I knew it I should've chosen Gentoo instead of arch

Happily using Pop! OS, cheers!!

As a Fedora user I can confirm that this seems about right.

Even though most people don't agree with the stats, I think it makes sense because Arch users are never satisfied with their setup. It could cause many of them to choose an average number.