Scots shares many words with English, and many words that look like they are English words spelled differently are indeed distinct Scots words, like gie, wi, aheid, heid / heed, oot, pairt, whit, et cetera. Scots also has a ton of regional dialects, and is spelled phonetically, so spellings can vary widely. There is also literary Scots vs spoken Scots. The Scots on Wikipedia for example is not the sort of Scots you’d usually hear someone speaking, or not at least that I’ve ever heard. Scots vs English as used today is often more of a spectrum than a clear distinction for these reasons. Like, sure, you can write in such a way that 99% of the words are not recognizeable to someone who doesn’t know Scots, but a sentence could also contain words that work in either language and still be considered Scots because those words are shared. There is also writer intention: a writer may use the English spelling of a word, whereas they’d use the Scots version in speech. Likely a result of the fact that for years, Scots speakers have been punished for speaking and writing Scots in schools, as a part of an intentional attempt at erasure of the language. This is where we get features like the “apologetic apostrophe,” which further muddies the waters, making it as though Scots writers are writing ‘English with an accent.’

IMO, I’d definitely call the language in this post Scots. Also, note the distinct Scots grammar: “I’m fair scunnered” vs “I’m fairly annoyed.”

Agreed, you get to pick between a system that empowers you to do whatever you like, or an unborkable system. If you need something that won’t let you shoot yourself in the foot, you ought to be using an immutable distro.

For ages I blamed GNU/Linux for breaking when I was unknowingly causing issues. These days, I don’t fix what isn’t broken, and if I can’t help myself, I make sure I understand what I’m doing, write down any changes I make, and ensure I have a snapshot ready in case things don’t work out.

GNU/Linux may not exclusively be for advanced users anymore, but system customization still is.

Initial setup can be hard, and then, because GNU/Linux lets you do whatever you want, It’s not hard to bork the system if you’re using commands you don’t understand. The biggest realization for me was that if I want a stable system, I can’t expect to experiment with it / customize it to the nth degree unless I have a robust rollback / recovery solution like timeshift in place. Feeling very empowered after leaving windows, I have destroyed many systems, but truly, if you set up your system and then leave it alone, these days it’s not difficult to have a good experience.

But yea, you’re totally right: the userbase can be toxic AF, and there’s no one place you can go to learn the basics you really ought to know.