Do different
The OS in 2008
- Built on UNIX foundations
- Eye candy interface with delightful little touches, and super-functional
- OS upgrades for pay and via offline media (e.g. CDs)
- No official package manager
- Freedom to install any application software (no app store)
- No cloud, less pervasive telemetry
- More or less a stand-alone OS
The same OS today
- Still on UNIX foundations
- Inconsistent, superficial and broken interface, user hostile, bug-ridden
- Severe restrictions on installing and running third party software
- App notarisation – gate-keeping via app review / rejections
- App store is first citizen – a gateway to collect ransom
- Still no official package manager, as it conflicts with revenue stream
- Free work suite is now for-pay
- Official rent-seeking apps (e.g. news, tv)
- Pervasive account required, Password manager syncs to the cloud
- Now upgrades are free and via the internet, OS choice no more
- Pervasive telemetry
- Falling-over to repressive regimes while fighting democratic ones
- Excellent hardware is being used as a trojan horse to trap you
These are not accidents, but incentivised to extract ever more rent. The fact that so many companies are doing it that this thing now has a term for it.
At an opportune time when AI is emptying RAM, CPU and GPU shelves off consumer aisles across the world, and single-board computers are getting killed due to price hikes, the devil is at the door with drool-worthy new offerings. What are you going to do?
I am increasingly fed-up with a modern tech scene that doesn’t care about our well-being. And for me, picking up an old computer connects me with a past that felt…different in the same way we might put on a vinyl record to feel more connected with our music. It’s an intentional choice. And it’s nice to make intentional choices once in a while.
Christian Starkjohann, creator of Little Snitch:
Recent political events have pushed governments and organizations to seriously question their dependence on foreign-controlled software. The core issue is simple and uncomfortable: through automatic updates, a vendor can run any code, with any privileges, on your machine, at any time. Most people know this, but prefer not to think about it. Linux is the obvious candidate for reducing that dependency: no single company controls it, no single country owns it. So I decided to explore it myself.
All shiny things do is make the experience a little friction free; while the free (as in freedom) ones expect a basic understanding of computing from users and some basic skills (and because they do not have trillion dollar budgets to offer the kind of polish), which increasingly fewer and fewer people are willing to learn and invest time in. Consider changing that1 to take back control one step at a time. Humility in computing does not mean computing poorly. In the end, it will not only make us more knowledgeable, but also save money.
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Invest, say, 30 min. a week for a year distraction-free, like you’d sit down and really learn. Watch OS installation and app installation videos, take a free course, buy some cheap hardware — even better two, set one up for experimenting, and set one as daily driver; transfer your efforts and learnings from the experimental computer to the daily driver. In a year, you’d be much further in your understanding than you’d be. ↩