I read through several pages before giving up and jumping to the end ... but what I saw gave no objective reason that the war will be won, this is pure hope or maybe a "call to arms". I actually don't see any convincing reason why we'll "win" this war and in fact I feel like we are on the precipice of becoming permanently locked out from it ever being possible. The main reason is the complex web of laws interacting established platforms that make it effectively illegal for any new competitor to ever become established. All over the world governments are starting to regulate complex and specific requirements around security, surveillance, encryption, etc that are fundamentally incompatible with true "general purpose" computing. For example, if your computer can encrypt things without a backdoor then authorities cannot listen. But if it can't then by definition it is not a general purpose computer. Which is it going to be? I think governments will win and we will lose general purpose computing.
The thing that has always defanged authorities of the past is organizational inability to see where the game is changing. And the game has gone on for a long time - villages would do all sorts of things to operate outside of the vision of the local lords.
The probable source of disruption comes from people one step removed from the top who see an opportunity to shake up the system and turn an activist message into opportunistic gain. This is why we often see waves of "anti-corruption" campaigns, sudden policy shifts, etc. The politicians see a trend forming and jump on to it. When they get in power they walk some of it back, but they can't turn back the clock all the way.
The source of a trend towards GPC comes from a series of "small wins" like the recent breakthroughs in Right to Repair, from IP that has recently expired, and from nationalistic competition("world's free-est country" will always be a title up for grabs).
It only takes one little country that's a "hacker haven" to jump ahead of the rest for a clamor to erupt. The dominant players will conclude that the answer is to strongarm that country into the hegemonic framework; others in weaker positions will see opportunities in jumping on. Then the fight is waged economically, and if the resulting products and services are desirable, concessions are made.
I think we will win because locked down platforms are fundamentally less powerful and less suitable for innovation than open platforms.
We are reaching a turning point where even the brightest minds struggle to generate major innovations on the locked down web. You can't build "the next Facebook" on the web as it is today because the incumbent powers suffocate you so effectively.
Conversely, the dweb is flush right now with innovation and new ideas, with an ecosystem of builders that are excited to share and compound off of eachother's ideas.
I believe that at maturity, the dweb will run absurd agile circles around the lockdown web.
I always see everything from national laws of various stripes to human apathy blamed for the slow decline of general purpose computing but I think the answer no one wants to admit is that the dream simply hinged on figuring out how to overcome certain practical hurdles that we have failed to cleae.
There's all sorts of fingers that could be pointed in different directions across different industries of course (some being the same industry now due to consolidation of the stack) but the most fundamental failure of judgement in my opinion was that there was a romantic notion once upon a time that computers would be this great equalizer that could even allow clever enough eggheads to take on the world (literally, not with some fancy high value business idea) while simultaneously bringing real opportunity and equality to the common man ('anyone who can use a computer will be more valuable than a CEO').
The former idea never quite managed to explain why these eggeads wouldn't be beholden to the limitations of the hardware at their disposal (Turns out computing hardware multiplies the effectiveness of the boogey men just as readily as it does the eggheads and the boogeymen do a lot more hiring). The latter notion was abandoned by the same people who dreamed it up in the first place not that they'll admit it (of course they wanted computing to empower the common man, it's surely a coincidence that every step of the way they focused on expanding only an egghead's ability to command computers with wider accessibility being an afterthought motivated primarily by profit incentives)
I think the ugly truth is that general purpose computing was more of a philisophical goal than a realistic one. It seems a lot more likely that from a technological perspective it's just a lot more efficient to have an expansive commons of innovative collaboration available for dueling giants to draw from on an as-needed basis.
> "I actually don't see any convincing reason why we'll "win" this war and in fact I feel like we are on the precipice of becoming permanently locked out from it ever being possible. ... For example, if your computer can encrypt things without a backdoor then authorities cannot listen. ..."
Why? Buy an off the shelf processor chip, buy memory chips, buy some interface chips to provide access to peripherals and storage, solder them to a board and you have a general purpose computer that will boot any code you write for it. The Raspberry Pi, Arduino, etc. are examples of this. If you want an absolute guarantee of no third-party code not under your control, use an FPGA to custom implement your processor the way that Bunnie Huang's Precursor project does. FOSS fills the gap for software.
Sure, you might not get the performance you want for the price you want, you might not be able to connect to the sites you want, or run a specific proprietary software package but that has nothing to do with general purpose computing. In no way, shape, or form is general purpose computing endangered nor has it ever been.
> For example, if your computer can encrypt things without a backdoor then authorities cannot listen. But if it can't then by definition it is not a general purpose computer.
No. The user could still deliberately chooose to run a different back-doored encryption software on the same computer. The definition still holds.
The general public will lose access to cheap general purpose computers, to the extent that they even exist now. Maybe because it poses a threat but probably most because the general public doesn’t care about general purpose computing. There will be no outcry when it becomes inaccessible to them.
The government can never effectively ban general purpose computing in an authoritative way because it’s just too easy to build a computer. You can build a computer using a bunch of fpgas connected together. If they ban fpgas, hackers will start using 80s-style 8 bit micros.
That is all to say, the people who care about general purpose computing will never lose it and the people who don’t care won’t even notice.
On several points I agree with the OP on the desirability of "universal computing". For more, I've long thought of most of the concerns in the OP and have not been and still am not much concerned: Why not?
=== No Smartphones
For all the threats of smartphones, I avoid them -- I don't have a smartphone. My phone is an old Bell touch tone desk set connected to essentially a land line.
I saw some threats of smartphones and didn't like the cost to buy, cost of usage, bad keyboard, small screen, and the general inability to write and run my software, old and new.
=== Digital Appliances
For threats of digital appliances, devices, from, say, Amazon, I don't have any. No way do I want some digital appliance listening to everything I say.
=== The Cloud
I don't trust the cloud. I make no direct use of the cloud. So the cloud is not a threat or cost to me. And I don't have to do mud wrestling with their poor or missing documentation on how their services work. What they are offering, no thanks. Not even for free. And whatever they say about reliability, security, or functionality, I don't believe it.
=== Encryption
For threats of encryption, if the situation gets serious, say, for my email, then I will make use of PGP (pretty good privacy). So, I will have encryption under my control that Apple, etc. can't do anything about. And I won't have to worry about back doors.
There was a reason PGP was open source -- to keep a big power, government, company, from getting control over encryption, putting in back doors, etc. I like the idea of being able to control my own encryption.
=== Text and Console Windows
To me, the main data I work with is just text, the standard ASCII character set. And my main user interface is text in console windows. A big reason is that it is easy to automate the use of text in console windows.
So, in particular, I make minimal use of the Microsoft user interface idea of on-screen direct manipulation graphical user interfaces (GUI). I never liked the idea of a GUI -- insults me as a user; is an interface I essentially can't program; gives output tough to process further.
In one sense, important to me, a GUI is nearly always a big step backwards; it has me do something once; but to do it 200 times I have to do it 200 times as I do it once. Instead, I want to automate doing that 200 times. E.g., I had a list of about 300 URLs and wanted to download them all. So I used my text editor KEDIT to develop a REXX script to call the program CURL 300 times and then ran the script in a console window and then processed the 300 downloaded files with KEDIT. No use of GUIs. For such work, usually GUIs are useless.
=== Files
I'm totally in love with Microsoft's NTFS (new technology file system or some such) file system. I would like better documentation on the file and directory (I HATE Apple introducing the word folder) attributes such as system, hidden, archive, etc. and on locking and concurrency.
E.g., for handling those 300 files, do that in a subdirectory -- don't let other files get in the way and can copy, delete, etc. easily.
=== Manipulating the Text
Since I work with text, I need good tools for handling text, and my most important computing tools are the text editor KEDIT, its macro language KEXX, the scripting language REXX, the D. Knuth mathematical word processing TeX (I write TeX but no LaTeX), a spell checker ASPELL that comes with the TeX distribution I use, the .NET languages and object library, for some important work an old Watcom Fortran compiler (with the very nice IBM linear programming package OSL, optimization subroutine library).
So, I want good tools and if necessary write my own and don't want little apps doing things for and/or to me. Really, so far I have no apps at all.
=== Version of Windows?
Since I like text and console windows so much, the stuff Microsoft added to Windows 7 Professional to get to Window 10 Home Edition I don't want. I just like that version of Windows 7. I can think of some improvements I would like a lot, but none of those are in Windows 10.
For what Apple wants me to use, no way, not a chance, never.
=== Good Windows
To me, one of the best things about any of the versions of Windows is that they are still good to great places to run old command line software. E.g., KEDIT goes back to PC/DOS, OS/2, Windows 95, ..., Windows 7, Windows 10.
=== Typing for Developing
I used KEDIT with KEXX and REXX to develop the software for the Web site of my startup, 24,000 .NET programming language statements in 100,000 lines of typing (lots of good comments with some little KEDIT macros to ease using documentation, etc.).
Visual Studio seems to be intended to do what I do with KEDIT -- so far I prefer KEDIT to Visual Studio. E.g., Visual Studio is part of the long standing Microsoft idea of GUIs, and I just reject that as a big step backwards. I had no trouble at all using KEDIT, etc. to develop that software. The problems were, e.g., bad documentation for SQL Server that made getting a connection string a solid week of mud wrestling. Finally someone in Microsoft's SQL Server organization solved the problem.
=== Documentation or Experiments
Part of the Microsoft, Apple GUI approach is no real documentation, e.g., nothing like what was written by Mike Cowlishaw for REXX or by D. Knuth for TeX, and, instead, learn just by experimentation. I don't like that experimentation -- e.g., Windows 10 has some huge number of special keystrokes that do things, and I still have no knowledge of what those keystrokes are or do. I encounter those keystrokes by accident; some windows pop up, and I work to close them ASAP since whatever they are I know I want nothing to do with them. I don't like undocumented tools.
=== No, I Don't Want That
Generally what the Apple, Microsoft people and their app developers have in mind to please me just makes me angry. What they are offering me, I don't want. To me their work just gets in the way of my work; I hate their work and their assumptions about my work.
So, on several points I agree with the OP on "universal computing". If Microsoft will keep console windows and let me run old software, I will be happy. To make me happier, they can do better on documentation and tools for common tasks in system management. E.g., I'd like better means of backup and restore. For more, they can have fewer bugs and security problems. For more, I would like some good documentation for Microsoft's Power Shell. For the rest of the industry, I wish I could get a keyboard as good as IBM shipped with their PC/AT.
I agree. I think the reaction to the recent reveal of Windows 11's TPM requirement shows that we have basically no chance of winning this war because the average computer owner of the 2020s is simply not intelligent or educated enough to know when they're being screwed over. They hear "it's for your security!" and immediately roll over like trained dogs.
I spend 3-5 years getting the perfect PC setup only to have it knocked down again every time I get a new PC and all the settings have moved, half the programs that used to work now either wont or has a replacement that's not quite what I want.
I am not against progress but I just need to work so I now specifically keep the last two generations of my PC offline just so I can compile a clients firmware or modify a PCB with the same environment I developed it on. The next generations of development environments are going on-line so it may not be an option for me.
At one point I designed complex communications systems from ISO layer 1 to layer 7 but these days I dont have a clue how to use the top layers, they change daily and I the guy in the IT dept to fix any issues with my smart phone or connecting to a clients network so I feel everyones pain.
I personally don't mind rethinks. I do this myself often. New insights come up all the time, I'm especially enamored with tiling window managers right now.
But what I do hate is taking away choice. A lot of these 'updates' have actually significantly removed configurability. "We removed this option because we don't think you need it" happens way too often. A computer exists to serve us. Not for us to bend to its will (or its manufacturer's).
My solution is... don't try to get the perfect setup.
Learn to just be happy with the defaults and get on with what matters - the work you're using it for. I change maybe 1 or 2 settings on a fresh macOS install and that's it. I don't even change the wallpaper.
> I just need to work
So don't distract yourself with trying to create the perfect setup! Worse is better.
You were an outlier before in all likelihood. It’s vanishingly rare for one person to have the skills design at both the PHY layer and application layers above it. It may have been possible in the earliest days, with lower speed and more resilient comms protocols, but I’d wager it’s practically impossible now at 1G Ethernet or wifi.
I got sick of things changing too, so I developed my own platform which abstracts away from the underlying OS, so I won't have my settings changed randomly or have hard links broken. It may seem like overkill but stability has a price.
What bothers me is the idea that we can only have one type of computing--that for general-purpose computing to exist, we have to kill off every other kind of computing.
This is not a zero-sum game. We can have console-style computers and general purpose computers, and they can both exist simultaneously without one having to win and the other having to lose.
My biggest fear isn't technical, it's cultural. Computing doesn't feel like it's winning hearts & minds. Computing gets further & further away, less and less personal, less intelligible, more mystical every year. We accept more magic into our lives, & the sense of engagement, the sense of ownership, the idea of personal computing feels like it's fading.
I'm techno-optimist, but there's going to be such a huge lag between the wins we start to make, the re-free-ing up of computing, & any significance or adoption. We need to re-liberate computing, make the technical victories, before we can even begin to fight the real general-purpose computing war. The dream of computing needs to be re-kindled.
I'm not so hopeful. To have some guarantee of rights and freedoms today, some sacrifice in convenience is needed. Most people I know who can understand what is at play are not willing so sacrifice even a bit of convenience.
The purpose-specific computing is more profitable right now. If we make general-purpose computing more attractive, then we may have a chance. But even then, compatibility maybe difficult.
I can see the day coming when few people will have general-purpose computers. Those will be the people who make things, and also have a good set of tools and maybe a milling machine.
This has already happened with phones and tablets, after all. And Chromebooks. And Windows 365. And Windows S. And locked-down enterprise machines.
"You think you have won! What is light without dark? What are you without me? I am a part of you all. You can never defeat me. We are brothers eternal!"
I enjoyed the first half but then it became a bit of a rant. It also went from praising creativity to vilifying developers who make you "require an internet connection". Everything is connected nowadays, especially now that we are forced to offer websites as "apps". And just as websites constantly change, so do apps require regular updates. For basic reasons such as compatibility, UX, etc
It's not all black and white.
But I agree, we will win. And I suspect the big players already know this, that might help explain their obsession to squeeze every cent from their market dominance
I don't know why that project died but I'm not surprised. It reminds me of how smart phones used to have removable batteries and were easier to replace parts for but many consumers preferred to buy slim phones that couldn't be opened.
After reading the text for a while, other GUI elements on my screen started slowly turning cyan. It took me a while to realize it's a weird compensation of my eyes to the website background color. (I used to have a monitor with a VGA connector that occasionally dropped one color channel)
After about 50 installs of Ubuntu, I finally have the perfect setup, with all of the packages and configurations I want. I have an install script (executed using bash) to do all of the work).
My configuration: Ubuntu with a QEMU/KVM Windows 10 GPU Passthrough. I also have my [Ubuntu] desktop configured to look like a Mac. It looks amazing! :-D See: https://ibb.co/WV97vnj
But before I did all of that: When I would set up a new OS, one of the first steps I do is install a screen recorder with webcam recording. I would record the setup process with the screen recorder and the webcam going and I would also talk through the setup. But, the key is to put (copy/paste) all of your executed scripts that you used during setup into a text file--and then email it to yourself prior to abandoning the setup process). Also, I upload the video to my NAS for later review, to help with making more refined setups, and also to add notes/comments to the bash setup script.
With regards to my setup: the Ubuntu is the primary operating system, but in reality, it works in tandem with the Windows 10. I basically use Ubuntu and Windows 10 in tandem, and it works much better than WSL 2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux 2).
In fact, I can even play games in virtual reality with this setup! (But, in reality: I only truly need Windows 10 for heavy reading as I have a print-related disability known as severe convergence insufficiency. The screenreaders in Linux just do not cut it. Also MacOS screenreaders also do not cut it for STEM work.)
Anyways, here is a good rudimentary "guide" which illustrates the thought process needed to create the QEMU/KVM Windows 10 Passthrough. See: https://pastebin.com/5tuvWTMH
I think the general trend will be to push power users to portable 'platforms', like Mathematica or using another analogy, trading apps like ThinkorSwim
*> "As users see their smartphones weaponized against them, and find few real alternatives, some are expressing fears that Tech Giants are plotting an oblique coup in all but name, and positioning to usurp national governments with their own brands of cybernetic governance. They are building in control and exclusion, disinformation, private digital money and surveillance capitalism into gadgets we seem unable to step away from. I believe this threatens Western liberal democracy, fought for at such cost 80 years ago."
Outside of those on the extreme, market forces ensure that consumers get what they pay for when it comes to computing. The paranoid will always be paranoid, that doesn’t mean the sky is falling.
[+] [-] mcint|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zmmmmm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] megameter|4 years ago|reply
The probable source of disruption comes from people one step removed from the top who see an opportunity to shake up the system and turn an activist message into opportunistic gain. This is why we often see waves of "anti-corruption" campaigns, sudden policy shifts, etc. The politicians see a trend forming and jump on to it. When they get in power they walk some of it back, but they can't turn back the clock all the way.
The source of a trend towards GPC comes from a series of "small wins" like the recent breakthroughs in Right to Repair, from IP that has recently expired, and from nationalistic competition("world's free-est country" will always be a title up for grabs).
It only takes one little country that's a "hacker haven" to jump ahead of the rest for a clamor to erupt. The dominant players will conclude that the answer is to strongarm that country into the hegemonic framework; others in weaker positions will see opportunities in jumping on. Then the fight is waged economically, and if the resulting products and services are desirable, concessions are made.
[+] [-] Taek|4 years ago|reply
We are reaching a turning point where even the brightest minds struggle to generate major innovations on the locked down web. You can't build "the next Facebook" on the web as it is today because the incumbent powers suffocate you so effectively.
Conversely, the dweb is flush right now with innovation and new ideas, with an ecosystem of builders that are excited to share and compound off of eachother's ideas.
I believe that at maturity, the dweb will run absurd agile circles around the lockdown web.
[+] [-] e7e6eydid8|4 years ago|reply
There's all sorts of fingers that could be pointed in different directions across different industries of course (some being the same industry now due to consolidation of the stack) but the most fundamental failure of judgement in my opinion was that there was a romantic notion once upon a time that computers would be this great equalizer that could even allow clever enough eggheads to take on the world (literally, not with some fancy high value business idea) while simultaneously bringing real opportunity and equality to the common man ('anyone who can use a computer will be more valuable than a CEO').
The former idea never quite managed to explain why these eggeads wouldn't be beholden to the limitations of the hardware at their disposal (Turns out computing hardware multiplies the effectiveness of the boogey men just as readily as it does the eggheads and the boogeymen do a lot more hiring). The latter notion was abandoned by the same people who dreamed it up in the first place not that they'll admit it (of course they wanted computing to empower the common man, it's surely a coincidence that every step of the way they focused on expanding only an egghead's ability to command computers with wider accessibility being an afterthought motivated primarily by profit incentives)
I think the ugly truth is that general purpose computing was more of a philisophical goal than a realistic one. It seems a lot more likely that from a technological perspective it's just a lot more efficient to have an expansive commons of innovative collaboration available for dueling giants to draw from on an as-needed basis.
[+] [-] ThrowawayR2|4 years ago|reply
Why? Buy an off the shelf processor chip, buy memory chips, buy some interface chips to provide access to peripherals and storage, solder them to a board and you have a general purpose computer that will boot any code you write for it. The Raspberry Pi, Arduino, etc. are examples of this. If you want an absolute guarantee of no third-party code not under your control, use an FPGA to custom implement your processor the way that Bunnie Huang's Precursor project does. FOSS fills the gap for software.
Sure, you might not get the performance you want for the price you want, you might not be able to connect to the sites you want, or run a specific proprietary software package but that has nothing to do with general purpose computing. In no way, shape, or form is general purpose computing endangered nor has it ever been.
[+] [-] vaylian|4 years ago|reply
No. The user could still deliberately chooose to run a different back-doored encryption software on the same computer. The definition still holds.
[+] [-] _dh54|4 years ago|reply
The government can never effectively ban general purpose computing in an authoritative way because it’s just too easy to build a computer. You can build a computer using a bunch of fpgas connected together. If they ban fpgas, hackers will start using 80s-style 8 bit micros.
That is all to say, the people who care about general purpose computing will never lose it and the people who don’t care won’t even notice.
[+] [-] graycat|4 years ago|reply
=== No Smartphones
For all the threats of smartphones, I avoid them -- I don't have a smartphone. My phone is an old Bell touch tone desk set connected to essentially a land line.
I saw some threats of smartphones and didn't like the cost to buy, cost of usage, bad keyboard, small screen, and the general inability to write and run my software, old and new.
=== Digital Appliances
For threats of digital appliances, devices, from, say, Amazon, I don't have any. No way do I want some digital appliance listening to everything I say.
=== The Cloud
I don't trust the cloud. I make no direct use of the cloud. So the cloud is not a threat or cost to me. And I don't have to do mud wrestling with their poor or missing documentation on how their services work. What they are offering, no thanks. Not even for free. And whatever they say about reliability, security, or functionality, I don't believe it.
=== Encryption
For threats of encryption, if the situation gets serious, say, for my email, then I will make use of PGP (pretty good privacy). So, I will have encryption under my control that Apple, etc. can't do anything about. And I won't have to worry about back doors.
There was a reason PGP was open source -- to keep a big power, government, company, from getting control over encryption, putting in back doors, etc. I like the idea of being able to control my own encryption.
=== Text and Console Windows
To me, the main data I work with is just text, the standard ASCII character set. And my main user interface is text in console windows. A big reason is that it is easy to automate the use of text in console windows.
So, in particular, I make minimal use of the Microsoft user interface idea of on-screen direct manipulation graphical user interfaces (GUI). I never liked the idea of a GUI -- insults me as a user; is an interface I essentially can't program; gives output tough to process further.
In one sense, important to me, a GUI is nearly always a big step backwards; it has me do something once; but to do it 200 times I have to do it 200 times as I do it once. Instead, I want to automate doing that 200 times. E.g., I had a list of about 300 URLs and wanted to download them all. So I used my text editor KEDIT to develop a REXX script to call the program CURL 300 times and then ran the script in a console window and then processed the 300 downloaded files with KEDIT. No use of GUIs. For such work, usually GUIs are useless.
=== Files
I'm totally in love with Microsoft's NTFS (new technology file system or some such) file system. I would like better documentation on the file and directory (I HATE Apple introducing the word folder) attributes such as system, hidden, archive, etc. and on locking and concurrency.
E.g., for handling those 300 files, do that in a subdirectory -- don't let other files get in the way and can copy, delete, etc. easily.
=== Manipulating the Text
Since I work with text, I need good tools for handling text, and my most important computing tools are the text editor KEDIT, its macro language KEXX, the scripting language REXX, the D. Knuth mathematical word processing TeX (I write TeX but no LaTeX), a spell checker ASPELL that comes with the TeX distribution I use, the .NET languages and object library, for some important work an old Watcom Fortran compiler (with the very nice IBM linear programming package OSL, optimization subroutine library).
So, I want good tools and if necessary write my own and don't want little apps doing things for and/or to me. Really, so far I have no apps at all.
=== Version of Windows?
Since I like text and console windows so much, the stuff Microsoft added to Windows 7 Professional to get to Window 10 Home Edition I don't want. I just like that version of Windows 7. I can think of some improvements I would like a lot, but none of those are in Windows 10.
For what Apple wants me to use, no way, not a chance, never.
=== Good Windows
To me, one of the best things about any of the versions of Windows is that they are still good to great places to run old command line software. E.g., KEDIT goes back to PC/DOS, OS/2, Windows 95, ..., Windows 7, Windows 10.
=== Typing for Developing
I used KEDIT with KEXX and REXX to develop the software for the Web site of my startup, 24,000 .NET programming language statements in 100,000 lines of typing (lots of good comments with some little KEDIT macros to ease using documentation, etc.).
Visual Studio seems to be intended to do what I do with KEDIT -- so far I prefer KEDIT to Visual Studio. E.g., Visual Studio is part of the long standing Microsoft idea of GUIs, and I just reject that as a big step backwards. I had no trouble at all using KEDIT, etc. to develop that software. The problems were, e.g., bad documentation for SQL Server that made getting a connection string a solid week of mud wrestling. Finally someone in Microsoft's SQL Server organization solved the problem.
=== Documentation or Experiments
Part of the Microsoft, Apple GUI approach is no real documentation, e.g., nothing like what was written by Mike Cowlishaw for REXX or by D. Knuth for TeX, and, instead, learn just by experimentation. I don't like that experimentation -- e.g., Windows 10 has some huge number of special keystrokes that do things, and I still have no knowledge of what those keystrokes are or do. I encounter those keystrokes by accident; some windows pop up, and I work to close them ASAP since whatever they are I know I want nothing to do with them. I don't like undocumented tools.
=== No, I Don't Want That
Generally what the Apple, Microsoft people and their app developers have in mind to please me just makes me angry. What they are offering me, I don't want. To me their work just gets in the way of my work; I hate their work and their assumptions about my work.
So, on several points I agree with the OP on "universal computing". If Microsoft will keep console windows and let me run old software, I will be happy. To make me happier, they can do better on documentation and tools for common tasks in system management. E.g., I'd like better means of backup and restore. For more, they can have fewer bugs and security problems. For more, I would like some good documentation for Microsoft's Power Shell. For the rest of the industry, I wish I could get a keyboard as good as IBM shipped with their PC/AT.
[+] [-] bakugo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boznz|4 years ago|reply
I spend 3-5 years getting the perfect PC setup only to have it knocked down again every time I get a new PC and all the settings have moved, half the programs that used to work now either wont or has a replacement that's not quite what I want.
I am not against progress but I just need to work so I now specifically keep the last two generations of my PC offline just so I can compile a clients firmware or modify a PCB with the same environment I developed it on. The next generations of development environments are going on-line so it may not be an option for me.
At one point I designed complex communications systems from ISO layer 1 to layer 7 but these days I dont have a clue how to use the top layers, they change daily and I the guy in the IT dept to fix any issues with my smart phone or connecting to a clients network so I feel everyones pain.
[+] [-] forgotmypw17|4 years ago|reply
This is my workstation, not a playground.
[+] [-] _abox|4 years ago|reply
But what I do hate is taking away choice. A lot of these 'updates' have actually significantly removed configurability. "We removed this option because we don't think you need it" happens way too often. A computer exists to serve us. Not for us to bend to its will (or its manufacturer's).
[+] [-] chrisseaton|4 years ago|reply
My solution is... don't try to get the perfect setup.
Learn to just be happy with the defaults and get on with what matters - the work you're using it for. I change maybe 1 or 2 settings on a fresh macOS install and that's it. I don't even change the wallpaper.
> I just need to work
So don't distract yourself with trying to create the perfect setup! Worse is better.
[+] [-] sokoloff|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HKH2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darklion|4 years ago|reply
This is not a zero-sum game. We can have console-style computers and general purpose computers, and they can both exist simultaneously without one having to win and the other having to lose.
[+] [-] rektide|4 years ago|reply
I'm techno-optimist, but there's going to be such a huge lag between the wins we start to make, the re-free-ing up of computing, & any significance or adoption. We need to re-liberate computing, make the technical victories, before we can even begin to fight the real general-purpose computing war. The dream of computing needs to be re-kindled.
[+] [-] marcodiego|4 years ago|reply
The purpose-specific computing is more profitable right now. If we make general-purpose computing more attractive, then we may have a chance. But even then, compatibility maybe difficult.
[+] [-] Animats|4 years ago|reply
This has already happened with phones and tablets, after all. And Chromebooks. And Windows 365. And Windows S. And locked-down enterprise machines.
[+] [-] deregulateMed|4 years ago|reply
My cellphone OS and web browser are FOSS.
My personal and side project server is FOSS.
I even used GIMP for 10+ years before finally giving adobe 10$ so I could knock out a flyer real quick.
I think we all know who the devil in the room is. FOSS fans know who the sinners are.
[+] [-] novok|4 years ago|reply
Also why go with adobe when there are better companies out there like Affinity or Pixelmator?
[+] [-] tonyedgecombe|4 years ago|reply
That sums up a lot of open source software for me.
[+] [-] Karrot_Kream|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petermcneeley|4 years ago|reply
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089469/characters/nm0000347
[+] [-] collaborative|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZoomZoomZoom|4 years ago|reply
Yeah, right, forced.
> And just as websites constantly change
Good ones [almost] don't.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] AtlasBarfed|4 years ago|reply
Moore's law is reaching the end. We are already at the point that most computers from 10 years ago are perfectly adequate.
If this were the situation in 1998 before the Gigahertz wars, then we'd be in trouble.
[+] [-] stadium|4 years ago|reply
Anyone have lessons learned from that experiment?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Ara
[+] [-] MomoXenosaga|4 years ago|reply
https://www.androidauthority.com/xiaomi-apple-europe-report-...
[+] [-] OnionBlender|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hytdstd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jenda_|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] disabled|4 years ago|reply
My configuration: Ubuntu with a QEMU/KVM Windows 10 GPU Passthrough. I also have my [Ubuntu] desktop configured to look like a Mac. It looks amazing! :-D See: https://ibb.co/WV97vnj
But before I did all of that: When I would set up a new OS, one of the first steps I do is install a screen recorder with webcam recording. I would record the setup process with the screen recorder and the webcam going and I would also talk through the setup. But, the key is to put (copy/paste) all of your executed scripts that you used during setup into a text file--and then email it to yourself prior to abandoning the setup process). Also, I upload the video to my NAS for later review, to help with making more refined setups, and also to add notes/comments to the bash setup script.
With regards to my setup: the Ubuntu is the primary operating system, but in reality, it works in tandem with the Windows 10. I basically use Ubuntu and Windows 10 in tandem, and it works much better than WSL 2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux 2).
In fact, I can even play games in virtual reality with this setup! (But, in reality: I only truly need Windows 10 for heavy reading as I have a print-related disability known as severe convergence insufficiency. The screenreaders in Linux just do not cut it. Also MacOS screenreaders also do not cut it for STEM work.)
Anyways, here is a good rudimentary "guide" which illustrates the thought process needed to create the QEMU/KVM Windows 10 Passthrough. See: https://pastebin.com/5tuvWTMH
As for making Ubuntu look like MacOS, see this (ignore the dashboard part--as there is a better guide): https://medium.com/@shahriarazizaakash/make-your-linux-ubunt...
Here is the best guide for the MacOS dashboard (go to the "plank" part and follow the instructions from there to create the best and most realistic MacOS dashboard for Ubuntu): https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-macos-theme-on-ubuntu...
[+] [-] Aboh33|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] taylodl|4 years ago|reply
And with this hyperbole I stopped reading.
[+] [-] new_realist|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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