A communist should be able to change a diaper, follow a trail, tend a farm, raise cattle, criticize a political manifesto, drive stick, teach a child, play an instrument, resolve disputes, organize a union, bind a wound, care for the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, read a map, mend a garment, gather mushrooms, hack a computer, and cook a tasty meal. Specialization is for the bourgeoisie.
That certainly seems to be a genre of article right now.
Cloudflare frees up 100TB of RAM by shrinking 1.1.1.1’s DNS cache entries
MSI promises an EXPO ULL-like boost for your existing DDR5 memory
Microsoft vows to make Windows 11 fly on 8GB RAM amid memory shortage
Yeah I was thinking about that, which is why I pointed out that Apple’s plan only worked because of the massive growth in personal computing. Google was able to create marketshare for Android during the massive growth in smartphones, but those conditions haven’t existed for anyone for a while.
Generally how these things go is that after the growth phase comes consolidation and monopoly - we’re far more likely to see Apple and MS merge into one corporation than we are to see a third option emerge as a serious competitor.
I think the big thing that everyone is missing here is that schools and workplaces need to push it into people’s lives. For that to happen Linux (or at least one of its distros backed by a hardware distributor) needs to develop killer features for those markets and successfully sell to them in large enough numbers that the average computer user - who does not care what their OS is because they only use it for email and work - will make sure that their at-home setup is compatible with their work machine.
That moment is when market forces will take over and drive real growth in desktop Linux, rather than the tiny little bumps we’ve seen the past few years thanks to the Steam Deck coming out and MS pissing its users off.
This is how Apple built its marketshare against the Microsoft domination of the 90s. For a long time it was the go-to “school computer”, and then those kids grew up and now a huge piece of the tech industry and culture is more or less Apple only. It’s unclear if this process can be repeated, since Apple’s marketshare was carved out during a time of massive growth in the industry that is unlikely to repeat, but I wouldn’t say it’s impossible if the right conditions reveal themselves.
I will say that it is highly unlikely that the people here would like the change if it happens - imagine Google slinging fully locked down “linux” machines en masse and everybody else needing to download their kernel fork that’s loaded with spyware (“for security reasons”) in order to connect to Google Teams for work. Maybe I’m being pessimistic but I just don’t see mass adoption of a new OS happening without some kind of fuckery like this that renders the version of Linux that gets mass adopted unrecognizable from the version we’re all using now.
The other option is state intervention, as with NeoKylin in China, although the Chinese government seems to be limiting themselves to just government computers with that distro.
Debian is basically exactly what I want out of a daily driver. Everything is exactly where I expect it to be every time I go to use it, nothing ever breaks because of a regular update, and it’s not like I can’t just go get the flatpack if I absolutely need the most recent features on an app.