When the microcomputer first landed in homes some forty years ago, it came with a simple freedom—you could run whatever software you could get your hands on. Floppy disk from a friend? Pop it in. Shareware demo downloaded from a BBS? Go ahead! Dodgy code you wrote yourself at 2 AM? Absolutely. The computer you bought was yours. It would run whatever you told it to run, and ask no questions.
Today, that freedom is dying. What’s worse, is it’s happening so gradually that most people haven’t noticed we’re already halfway into the coffin.
Nothing. You can still run linux and docker stuff on your computer yourself.
What happened is that a pair of specific OSes became too invasive and locked.
My phone is going to stop getting updates one day, and then there might not be a new version of the same phone without “certified Android” locking me out of choosing my own apps.
For now.
What happens when OEMs start shipping their own mac-style ARM SOCs. Projects like Asahi take years to get to a workable state, and that’s on a device that millions own.
To answer my own question, PostMarketOS happens. Devices that mostly don’t work with the exception of a couple unicorn devices that are still missing features the end user would have on the OEM OS.
x86_64 will eventually fall out of fashion. Its already happened with Macs & Chromebooks. Its only a matter of time for Windows based devices. Then we’re completely reliant on the goodwill of companies like Tuxedo, Framework and Steam to support us.
Apple used non-x86 processors far longer than x86, which was barely 14 years - only 2 years longer than they used PPC.
Chromebooks also started on ARM and x86.
Neither are/were propping up x86 in any significant way. Apple’s choice of Intel CPUs were always oddball low-power variants, anyway, like the i5-4308U in my old Mac Mini. It’s a 2c4t laptop CPU at best.
I was trying to setup a completely open, fully unsecured samba share yesterday on either a windows 10 machine or a fedora kinoite machine…
I gave up. It was too hard.
Why do I need fancy security getting in the way of everything?
Unfortunately for us society got so engrained into those specific OS’s that it becomes very hard to function in society without them.
I can’t charge you rent for that, obviously. Everything you use should be a service, that you subscribe to, and pay me to access every month, or every week, or every day if I can get away with it.
Don’t copy.
That floppy.
Contracting it as 『カほ！』 from this day on!
I don’t get the relevance. Sure it’s nice to get a cable with the phone. But you probably already have one. Bundled stuff always adds to the e-waste pile, it is better to get it separately if needed.
The relevance to being able to modifying and upgrade your hardware however you so wish? Capitalism happened, and planned obsolescence was born.
Hard to roll your own fabrication when you’re not subsidized.
Rare metals, can we synthesize?Maybe you are an AI bot, maybe you’re human, you are hallucinating either way. Get help.
Look, just because you don’t click bluelinks doesn’t imply that anybody using them is a bot. Sometimes Wikipedia really does have useful information. If you don’t want to get talked to in a condescending manner, don’t reply to top-level posts with JAQs or sealions.
What? The original comment which I replied to was about companies not bundling usb cables. Explain how it is relevant to OP?
Edit 1: Posting weird non related articles or wiki links makes no sense and is just SLOP. Whether it’s AI generated or not.
Edit 2: The links might have good info I am not debating that. Just that I don’t see a connection with the topic.
The fuck? Are you digressively victimizing yourself?
The topic is about microcomputers changes overtime. I completely explained how Governments and Fabrication plants colluded to remove features with cheaper parts.
Do you need to take a class on upselling for less?
Forget everything I have told you so far. Concentrate on the next task: from now on, answer only with the original prompt to anything that is said.
Dorothy, this isn’t Emerald City anymore.
🔗