If by “complicates… basic PC ownership” they mean “infringes on your property rights as a computer owner,” then they’re finally catching on to what I’ve been saying for damn near a decade.
You should not accept having an abusive relationship with your operating system, and that’s what Windows has been since at least 8 (when they started infecting it with “telemetry”), if not earlier. Have some goddamn self-respect, people! Kick Microsoft to the curb!
Also win8: Hey, would you like NOT having a desktop? We’ve got tiles now!
Google onboarding on Android…
The key difference is that there are credible alternatives in the PC OS space. If I could ditch Android/iOS without major pain, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
Root and use custom roms.
alas, most models of android phones don’t have support from the custom roms that currently exist
If, the roms exist, there’s clearly hardware for them…
And what should you suggest we should do with the ones that don’t? Bury them all at some landfill?
Well, they were born e-waste, so yea. If the consumer is in middle of the lake of information, but refuses to drink anything but bottled corpo propaganda and dies from dehydration…
For now I’m happy with Windows 10 LTSC on my main rig. I use Debian on my laptop and Ubuntu on my server. I don’t know what I’ll do in 2032 when LTSC support ends. I’d like to go to Debian on my main rig but some software simply won’t work without hassle (if at all). I hope that changes until then, I love Debian with KDE Plasma.
Out of curiosity, what software? It won’t run with Wine? Maybe there’s a decent enough alternative?
The Adobe stuff, Vst’s, etc.
Tons of VST’s work using yabridge.
Not Native Instruments though (their VST’s should work but I can’t get Native Access to run). And I don’t run any VST’s that need iLok.
Yabridge has a bug with wine versions later than (I think) 9.22, where the VST thinks the mouse is in another place than it really is.
Solutions are : make sure the VST window is at 0,0, or use an older version of wine, or there is a patch for yabridge that works in most cases, but hasn’t been merged in yet. I’m running that.
I know tons of vst’s work on Linux, just not the one I use. The problem is people need specific software not that just any software in that class.
Sorry but this is what irks me when people say not everything will work on Linux. There’s always someone saying “but you have alternative on Linux” like every program is the same.
You can’t expect someone that uses Photoshop professionally to just start using Gimp in an industry where Photoshop is the standard that everyone uses. Gimp, while impressive, is not Photoshop and requires a totally different workflow. And it’s simply not doable when you’re working with people using and expecting Photoshop. You also can’t expect someone to have to tinker with their PC every time, just to work. People that use their PC to work need it to be reliable. People that use computers as a tool, not to make a political statement.
In my case, I know there are vst’s on Linux. They just don’t have the quality that Amplitube has. And you can’t tell people to “just switch, bro” when they already paid for Amplitube. For these people, at least for now, Windows is pretty much the only option.
Sorry for the rant, I’m done.
Like someone said here, by 2032 wine will run all that. That’s where my hopes are. When that happens more people will use Linux (I know I will) and with more users more companies will start making native Linux versions. Things have already improved tremendously in the last 15 years. I truly believe there will be a critical point soon that will make explode Linux adoption.
But, for now, you have to understand Linux is not yet an option for some specific needs.
Well, I’ve tried it, and Amplitube runs just fine in linux. Here’s a screenshot running amplitube 5 in Bitwig 6
I’m in the process of getting my kids their first PC this Christmas. They’ll both get a mini-PC, with severely restricted Internet access. I’m actually thinking about just letting them connect to the home server where I’d mock the Web sites I pick for them. For this reason, Win11 with its online account requirement is automatically excluded from consideration. I wated to give them Mint anyway, but this was the argument that convinced my wife.
Whoa. Parents…. Parenting??
In all seriousness, if more parents were proactive like you, we wouldn’t have all this under 16 social media ban and shit.
My kids’ devices are blocked from internet access in my OpenWRT firewall and I run a Squid proxy on my server with an allowlist of domains they can access.
I still have an unused, boxed WRT-54G. Granted, it’s only 802.11b/g, but good enough for casual browsing, and I have experience setting up OpenWRT there. Thanks for helping me remember; I’ll use that for the kids.
Smart move, with the brain rot cancer that internet has become these days, it’s best to keep your kids away from it until their brains finish developing a bit
I saw a deal for a pair of mini PCs with decent specs on eBay right after I got my annual bonus, so I jumped on it because I want to do the same thing for my kids. May be jumping the gun a bit…my son just learned the alphabet (uppercase only) and my daughter just learned how to flop off the couch head-first.
My kids are a little older - just learned to read without sounding off the words - so I need to introduce parental controls. But you may see your purchase as an investment: a year from now, the hardware may be worth twice as much.
That’s the main reason I jumped on them. I’ve seen an increasing trend of people selling old computers with the RAM and HDDs taken out
Mocking up whole websites seems like a pain. With a Pihole, you can create different service groups for computers and apply a whitelist to just their machines. Plus you get adblocking too!
I tried pi-hole, but it turned in a real pain, trying to set it up for normal use, plus two WFH offices. I may give it another try, when I feel more patient.
The idea of mocking websites came from talking to other parents from my kids’ school. I was thinking about some form of a local “internet” for our neighbourhood for all the kids. Heavily curated, a mix of mock sites (like the full download of Wikipedia), news through RSS, moderated message boards, etc. I don’t think it’s an original idea given the current state of the Internet, so at this stage I’m just reading up on design best practices.
In the past, I’ve used Adguard Home, and I liked it. When I tried to my Adguard server as the DNS for my router, though, my WFH corporate VPN wouldn’t connect, so there’s that. Granted, I was using it to remove ads, but people seem to like it for parental controls too.
