It’s not the “AI nightmare”, it’s a nightmare of capitalism, proprietary software and user-hostile behavior by a greedy, profit-extracting Big Tech corporation.
All true, and all a problem for which linux has been a solution (in the computing world) for decades now.
It’s not just Linux, but free & open source software in general. And it’s not just desktop PCs that are plagued by this corporate spyware, it’s much worse when looking at the mobile device landscape. The only real solution for mobile devices is GrapheneOS with FOSS software installed from the F-Droid marketplace. Browsers are also under attack by proprietary software corporations, Google just intentionally broke adblockers on all Chromium-based browsers, so they can generate more ad revenue. Last year, they tried to push a proposal that would have massively extended their monopoly on web browsers (WEI). All the streaming services are screwing their users over and increasing the subscription prices while making the content library smaller. It’s such a fucking scam, and it’s almost sad to see how many people are dumb enough to fall for it.
It’s not AI that is the problem, it’s half baked insecure data harvesting products pushed by big corporations that are the problem.
Linux may be the best way to avoid the <insert dystopian corporate feature> nightmare
Always has been
“The Year Of Linux on Desktops”. Been hearing this for decades, but it might actually be happening. What I’m feeling now is the same thing I felt when Mozilla originally split Firefox out, and made the first real competition to corporate browsers as a free product. People don’t want all this bullshit, and want to retain control over the machines they are working on. Seems a lot more people are interested in FOSS environments now just to avoid all the other BS they hate getting shoveled at them.
“The Year Of Linux on Desktops”. Been hearing this for decades, but it might actually be happening.
Been hearing this for decades.
And it won’t ever be true until you can pick up a PC running Linux in a big box store. I could see the Steam Deck (and Valve’s rumoured upcoming console) to make a dent in the PC gaming space, but it won’t make a difference to the purchasing decisions of your your aunt who uses her pc to check her emails.
Should corporate buyers ever get tired of MS’ shenanigans they might switch over to Ubuntu, but I’m not holding my breath for that.
At work, we have a strict ban on purchasing any laboratory equipment that requires Windows. After about a year, several of our suppliers have been pressured to offer Linux support, precisely because we don’t have time for windows shenanigans on a $100k piece of advanced benchtop hardware. We just got our first oscilloscope with Red Hat preinstalled.
Also, regular people aren’t buying PCs as much as they used to. The PC is now a workplace and enthusiast device. Everyone else uses mobile.
There is no year of Linux desktop, it just keeps trucking and growing
It doesn’t really seem to be growing much, to be honest.
It’s dominating the smartphone market via Android, though.
As long as even basic features like push notifications are locked behind Google services, I’d hardly count that as a win. The Google monopoly on android is even worse than the Microsoft monopoly on PCs. Microsoft has at least some good alternative with the current Linux environment, but Googles only competitor is apple with an even worse system.
Sure there are projects like LinageOS and GraphenOS, but both are still reliant on micro G or containerised Goggle apps.
Lineage and GrapheneOS don’t rely on Google Play services. It’s your apps that depend on this proprietary bullshit. That’s exactly why we need to grow the Android FOSS app ecosystem. We already have FOSS app marketplaces like F-Droid and Accrescent, and Obtainium allows us to download APKs from GitHub releases, as well as many other sources. There are many great FOSS apps that work just as well or even better than their proprietary counterparts. Some of my personal favorites are Breezy Weather, AntennaPod, Thunder for Lemmy, Aegis for 2FA, Standard Notes, LibreTube for YouTube, Xtra for Twitch and Translate You. There are alternatives for basically any Google service. We have UnifiedPush for notifications, OpenStreetMaps for maps and navigation, various serach engines like DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Mojeek and others (Android now even asks the user what search engine to use, instead of selecting Google as the default). There’s an improved fork of Signal called Molly, which has a FOSS variant that doesn’t use any proprietary Google libraries, it supports notifications through WebSockets instead of relying on Google’s FCM and they even have an option for UnifiedPush.
