When i first got here we hadn’t even hit 1% yet. Open source scares Microsoft because if they fuck up they are done but we have a million distributions with a million different mutations its perfect evolution we cannot get worse only better.
Oh, it can get worse. If Windows market share should really plummet, it won’t be replaced by a heterogenous distro utopia but some company like Canonical or Red Hat or a new one will get their distribution to fill the gap. And call me a cynic but I doubt this will be immune to enshittification.
But even that scenario is better than what we have with Microsoft and Apple. The FOSS world would still benefit like it does from the Steam Deck developments.
Well, no offense intended, but that is cynical. The only way for enshittification to hit Linux would be if only one group controlled it. When IBM/Red Hat discontinued CentOS, the community immediately moved to fill the gap with AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux.
That said, yes, things can always get worse. I don’t think Linux is immune to having problems, but not on the scale of what’s happening with Windows with their Copilot garbage.
My response to that is Flatpak. 16MB of software requiring 700MB to download and consuming 2.8GB of disk space. Linux absolutely can be bad, due to cultural issues.
(My example software above is Handbrake. I’m sure someone’s going to “well actually” me about this, and I don’t even care. I don’t see how it can be justified, and I’m kind of curious to see if someone can do it.)
it’s great for applications that are notorious for requiring specific versions of libraries and can cause dependency hell. moves unnecessary system dependencies into a sandbox. for me this means i don’t have to enable multilib to install Steam and pull in 32 bit libraries on my root.
while it does take a lot of disc space it doesn’t duplicate dependencies in most cases. i would say you receive some good benefits at the cost of a bit more disc space, such as increased security, easy installs, explicit app permissions. it’s great for when you have to install a proprietary tool in that you gain control of what it’s allowed to access.
We are already (mostly all of us) stuck with one company’s systemd. We’re already on some portion of what you’re describing. As long as we use FOSS I think somebody will be able to fork any software that starts turning to shit with ads, LLM everywhere, spying on your activity, etc.
Thats a very cool perspective. I hadnt considered this. Everyone seems to be hating on linux‘s fracturization but it does remind me of evolution now that you mention it.
Principally correct, but please note the difference between “open-source software” (OSS) and “free and open-source software” (FOSS). They are two related, but different philosophies, and principally, GNU/Linux belongs to the latter rather than to the former.
When i first got here we hadn’t even hit 1% yet. Open source scares Microsoft because if they fuck up they are done but we have a million distributions with a million different mutations its perfect evolution we cannot get worse only better.
Oh, it can get worse. If Windows market share should really plummet, it won’t be replaced by a heterogenous distro utopia but some company like Canonical or Red Hat or a new one will get their distribution to fill the gap. And call me a cynic but I doubt this will be immune to enshittification.
But even that scenario is better than what we have with Microsoft and Apple. The FOSS world would still benefit like it does from the Steam Deck developments.
Well, no offense intended, but that is cynical. The only way for enshittification to hit Linux would be if only one group controlled it. When IBM/Red Hat discontinued CentOS, the community immediately moved to fill the gap with AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux.
That said, yes, things can always get worse. I don’t think Linux is immune to having problems, but not on the scale of what’s happening with Windows with their Copilot garbage.
My response to that is Flatpak. 16MB of software requiring 700MB to download and consuming 2.8GB of disk space. Linux absolutely can be bad, due to cultural issues.
(My example software above is Handbrake. I’m sure someone’s going to “well actually” me about this, and I don’t even care. I don’t see how it can be justified, and I’m kind of curious to see if someone can do it.)
it’s great for applications that are notorious for requiring specific versions of libraries and can cause dependency hell. moves unnecessary system dependencies into a sandbox. for me this means i don’t have to enable multilib to install Steam and pull in 32 bit libraries on my root.
while it does take a lot of disc space it doesn’t duplicate dependencies in most cases. i would say you receive some good benefits at the cost of a bit more disc space, such as increased security, easy installs, explicit app permissions. it’s great for when you have to install a proprietary tool in that you gain control of what it’s allowed to access.
We are already (mostly all of us) stuck with one company’s systemd. We’re already on some portion of what you’re describing. As long as we use FOSS I think somebody will be able to fork any software that starts turning to shit with ads, LLM everywhere, spying on your activity, etc.
Thats a very cool perspective. I hadnt considered this. Everyone seems to be hating on linux‘s fracturization but it does remind me of evolution now that you mention it.
Principally correct, but please note the difference between “open-source software” (OSS) and “free and open-source software” (FOSS). They are two related, but different philosophies, and principally, GNU/Linux belongs to the latter rather than to the former.
If FOSS ever fails, it’s going to be because of ridiculously stupid pedantry like this.
“I’d just like to interject for a moment…”
Well the principle i was talking about requires free forking which would make it foss.