Always eat your greens!
Similar tactic among all the large tech corpos, switch focus to IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, become the backbone of the modern computing landscape.
It’s basically a slow switch to becoming critical international infrastructure like power grids, water ways, and gas/oil pipelines.
This all while locking you in as much as possible and milking as much value as they can squeeze.
Here’s my twisted life exposed…I have no issue watching 1080p on my QLED 4K TV. I game at 1080p happily, I honestly don’t give a shit about 4K content.
1080p looks good enough for me, and I actually watch 720p on my phone screen half the time too.
And not because of lack of speed, I have a 1Gbps+ fiber line up and down.
And tbh, if it means I get to own and control my media, I would tolerate even worse quality if that’s what I needed to do.
Grunge computing ftw! Quality at the cost of your soul? Fuck that!
Appimage is probably the most similar to a naked .exe in Windows. They are useful for small apps or simple indie games, but I prefer Flatpaks for my everyday big applications.
Agreed, Snaps are like Flatpaks but worse because locked down back end and Canonical’s sketchy nature. Imagine a really delicious pastry that anybody can make and sell, then imagine the same pastry but only one bakery in the world can make and sell it. Which would you prefer? Lol
Essentially yes, if you start using lots if older applications or mixing applications that use many different dependency versions, you will start to use lots of extra disk space because the different apps have to use their own separate dependency trees and so forth.
This doesn’t mean it will be like 2x-3x the size as traditional packages, but from what I’ve seen, it could definitely be 10-20% larger on disk. Not a huge deal for most people, but if you have limited disk space for one reason or another, it could be a problem.
I’m not an expert, but from my understanding, more like android apps.
They aren’t totally isolated like a docker or LXC container would be, but they are generally self-contained.
The Linux Experiment has a really great vid that goes into detail on all common packaging formats in Linux including Flatpaks:
Flatpak is a universal application packaging standard for Linux. It allows devs to create a single application that gets bundled with all necessary dependencies including versioning.
These apps run in their own semi-isolated “container” which makes immutable distros possible. (Distros like Fedora Silverblue that are effectively impossible to break by installing or removing critical system files.)
This means that a Linux app doesn’t have to have a .deb version, an .rpm version, or be pre-compiled for any other distros. A user can simply go to Flathub, (the main repository for Flatpak apps), download the flatpak, and install it on their distro of choice.
It’s quickly becoming the most popular way for users to install apps on Linux because it’s so easy and quick. But there are a few downsides like size on disk, first party verification, per-distro optimizations, and the centralization of application sources. That’s why some users aren’t fully endorsing or embracing how popular they are becoming.
It only exists to counter the existing framework. In an ideal world, nobody would honor or respect the idea of “intellectual property” and hence, only fraud would be punished.
You misunderstand me. When I say, “copyright is bullshit” I don’t mean that I don’t like it, or that it doesn’t work. I mean it’s bullshit in the same way that the crystal healing or mushroom cancer therapy is bullshit.
You cannot steal an idea, it’s impossible. So creating laws that punish people for doing things like copying a digital file doesn’t make sense. Copyright supposedly was created to create an incentive for artists and inventors to make cool and enriching stuff.
But what it actually does is protects business savvy people and allows them to game the system, get first mover advantage over all others, and then punish any potential competitors in that space.
As if nobody was creating artwork or inventing useful devices before copyright law came into being.
Just because something is useful doesn’t make it good, atomic bombs are useful, factory farming is useful.
I think the only thing people should be protected from as a creator is fraud. You can copy a person’s works and modify or distribute them in any manner you see fit, as long as it’s clear that you are not the original creator. You cannot claim to be them or to be affiliated with them unless you actually are.
That is what the principle of copyleft is all about. If copyright worked in principle, then you should see millions of individual creators enriched and protected by it.
But you don’t see that, instead, a few giant mega corps and super wealthy tycoons own and control enormous swaths of “intellectual property” and small time creators struggle to make ends meet and are sued into oblivion by the same powerful groups.
Sure it’s great for boosting wealth and GDP, but that boost does not apply to most of the population, it applies to the tiny elite that has now captures enormous segments of the market and fight tooth and nail to keep it that way.
Copyright is structurally flawed, it doesn’t work because it cannot work. It’s fundamentally based on a the nonsensical concept of “intellectual property” which as I said at the beginning, is bullshit.
Copyright is bullshit, so no.
I have been enjoying fish a lot over the last few months, but I generally try to use Bash, it makes cross-*NIX administration that much easier.
“We won’t train AI on artists’ work…this quarter.”
~Adobe probably
Yeah, IT is in a similar boat. Not as bad, but still where I live, Linux environments are super rare. So if you are going into IT, you are going to be working in Windows environments, and most firms use software that isn’t compatible with Linux.
Stuff like their remote management software, or their inventory management software. Plus, unless you’re the guy in charge of the IT department, almost nobody wants or even knows how to administrate a Linux endpoint.
So they don’t want one of their sys admins to be running around on a Linux machine that they don’t have as much visibility on or understanding of how it works.
I’m lucky that the company I work for is small enough that I am the entire IT department, so I can use whatever OS I want. Debian 12 with Plasma, love it.
But out in the world, you’re going to find a bunch of situations like you are in, where so much of the defaults use Windows and proprietary garbage, you’re stuck running exactly what they are.
Long term, you could start trying to build your own indie studio that is FOSS-based. Maybe years down the line you can make it on your own. Do that full time and make supplemental income as an outside contractor or something. IDK, that also comes with its own set of issues. It’s a shitty tech corpo dystopia all around us.
Fair, yeah that is a solid solution.
Absolutely.
Fair point, Pixels aren’t flagship expensive, but they definitely aren’t cheap either.
For sure.
I thought the video was pretty reasonable. I wasn’t criticizing him with my hot take.
It will always be a balance of what you’re willing to do for what you believe in, vs pragmatism and comfort.
Some things are better sacrificed, because they aren’t actually very good to begin with. But other things are better adapted or emulated into a FOSS framework.
On a more personal note, I was prepared to give up far more than I actually needed to when switching to Linux 100%. Linux has gotten so good in most areas, it’s pretty incredible.
Some people will never be willing to move to Linux. Even if Linux was 98% compatible with their needs, they would stay on Windows for that remaining 2%.
There are folks who would let Windows punch them in the groin or slap them across the face once per month as long as they could play their favorite kernel-level anticheat esport trash.
There are a few people who make their living using evil software like the Adobe suite, and for them I truly feel sorry that they are trapped in the dystopian hell of modern proprietary software, but we do live in a society I guess.
The tough truth is, many people don’t really give a shit about privacy, consumer rights, software freedom, or transparency, even if they say they do. They will huff and puff about how terrible Windows has gotten. They will rant and rave about how ridiculous the ads are in their OS or how they think it’s wrong for their OS to spy and track their actions constantly.
But when the rubber meets the road and they can sacrifice a few things to gain their freedom, they won’t do it. I know, because I have multiple friends and family that have been acting like this for years.
Whenever I suggest Linux or FOSS alternatives to their proprietary apps, they initially are interested. But of course they will always find the one or two things they like to use/play/have that doesn’t work or is a pain on Linux, and they bail.
I had one friend who was saying they were “totally serious about switching to Linux soon.” But they bailed when they found out that Valorant doesn’t work on Linux. Do they play Valorant actively? No, they haven’t played it in years, but they, “wanted the possibility to play it just in case they decided to get back into it again.”
Personally, there isn’t a single game or piece of software I would ever give up Linux for. I just flat out refuse to use Windows or MacOS on any of my personal computers. It’s a pledge I made years ago and I will forever stick to it.
Hot take: If you claim to be against all the big tech abuses and value software and computing freedom, but a handful of PC games is enough to stop you from leaving an abusive proprietary OS, you weren’t very serious about it to begin with.
Not sure why GrapheneOS is getting down voted so much here, did I miss something recent that happened?
I’ve been using GrapheneOS on my Pixel 6a for around 2 years and really like it.
If I couldn’t use GOS though, I would probably go with DivestOS. I haven’t looked deep into other alternative Android ROMs.
I’ve heard that the DoD uses RHEL pretty extensively. RHEL in the US Military
That article says that the US military has the largest single install base for RHEL in the world, but that was about 15 years ago, I don’t know if that’s still true.
Apparently back then the US nuclear sub fleet and its sonar systems also ran on RHEL.
I suspect lots of military hardware runs some form of *Nix or BSD type system. Many embedded systems run some *Nix type OS, and a huge portion of the developed world’s weaponry is smart, so it it full of low power embedded systems and custom SoCs.