My impression of you is not something that can be right or wrong. My challenge to you was that a userspace program can brick a machine. I made that challenge because you predicated your ad hominem attack on the idea that a userspace package install couldn't brick a system: "You calling a borked package install in userspace almost bricked is telling about your technical capability." You haven't refuted it, because you can't. And the fact that you missed rebutting my challenge (claiming you didn't see the point) and argued past me with a different point that video card drivers are not the same as the primary bios tells me enough to form an impression.

Anyway.

This thread spawned off of a discussion about how people still use Apple because though Linux may be easier than it's ever been it's still hard for anybody to run a Linux desktop system without occasional downtime and repair when something breaks. That was the point of the comment you initially responded to.

But, you missed it; you responded to:

"and almost bricked itself?? Not sure, had to fix apt"

with:

"well um axually you don't know what bricked means and that's probably a sign that you're too dumb to use linux. people who are too dumb to use linux shouldn't use it".

Even though we agree on the point, I felt like your response wasn't fair or really even apropos. So I replied. To be crystal clear:

1. they did fix their problem, but it was not a fun time for them. I can empathize 1000% with that. Sometimes I just want to do something and Linux (and everything I sign up for when deploying it) itself gets in the way. When an apt update causes a boot failure, irrespective of whether it's a failing driver or a borked firmware, it's annoying and it gets in the way. It's not an issue of technical literacy. You still have to figure out the issue and fix it which costs time and attention that is so scarce these days.

2. "bricked" has evolved colloquially to refer to a spectrum of failure modes covering everything from "the firmware is toast" to "user-space didn't come up". never mind that the author used the term "almost bricked" to indicated they knew it wasn't hard bricked but intended to communicate that it also wasn't functional. your entire attack stems from you rashly misinterpreting the author's intent here. but even if the author had demonstrated clear technically illiteracy, there's a way for you to add commentary about the definition of bricked without the distraction of attacking the person's technical aptitude. I think everyone knows it's almost impossible to inadvertently hard-brick anything these days

All in all, you, me, and the comment you initially replied to do seem to share the same understanding: to operate linux you need to have a level of tolerance to deal with the occasional issues that come with it. And for many (even technical) people that's not the right balance. Everything else you introduced to the discussion detracted from that point.