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How would Linux have been today if locked bootloaders were as common in the 90s as they are now on ARM devices?

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Timely_Jellyfish_2077@programming.dev
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linux@lemmy.ml
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Basically the title

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_edge@discuss.tchncs.de
27 points

Valid question. You can ask this about many things:

Would the Internet as we know it exist if Facebook, AOL, and Yahoo had united to create a walled garden?

Would Macbooks as we know them today exist without an open source ecosystem? Would the company Appke exist? Would there be an iPhone?

Would the web exist without Linux? Both developed at the same time, 1991 till now, and most stuff runs on Linux servers.

Would the people who build all the hardware and software even be interested in computers had they not played with (build) computers in the 90ies? What if we had given them an iPad aith CandyCrush that just works; and not BIOS codes, cables, extension cards and drivers?

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cranakis@reddthat.com
20 points

What if we had given them an iPad aith CandyCrush that just works

We’ll know the answer in just a few more years here. Whole generation growing up that way currently.

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data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.website
17 points

On the “web without Linux”, I imagine it probably would have been scattered across a few proprietary Nixes until FreeBSD emerged from the AT&T lawsuit, upon which FreeBSD would have become the dominant web server.

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