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Your Computer Isn't Yours

sneak.berlin

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Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#381

Post by kebman »

jm547ster wrote: post #243
kebman wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not. Since the last few iterations of Apple hardware and OS software, I've decided to switch to something else. I'm also advicing all friends and collegues to do the same. There is simply no reason to stay with Apple anymore as a professional. It used to be stability and ease of use, but Windows has since closed that gap, and Linux is a close second (and a must for programming). Most likely that means I'll run a…

Gravit designer, Blender and Bitwig studio would come to mind as tools for multimedia production that are as good as anything on the other platforms.

Great tips! Thank you! I'm more into 2D compositing for video, but I've had my eye on Blender for some time. Not sure how it stacks up against stuff like After Effects. For audio production I already use Reaper FM, but I might give Bitwig a go too. ^^

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#382

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

fn1 wrote: post #369
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In other words, it is perceived as harder because people make it harder. If by "people" you mean "Linux Desktop developers". They have taken relatively simple things and abstracted them two or three times until they are so complex and fragile they need special programs and standards to automagically manage it all for the user. As soon as you step outside the box of what they expect (hey, why can't I install a progr…

> hey, why can't I install a program on a different disk than my OS? Apple user here (had Linux on the desktop for 5+ years and windows for a longer time): Why would I care whether my program is on one disk or another? Why would I even "install" something, instead of dragging/dropping a single "file" (yes I know it's a directory) like I usually do. Do Linux applications all self-update using Sparkle like Mac-applicat…

> Why would I care whether my program is on one disk or another?

A lot of reasons. Maybe your OS disk is on a ludicrously fast SSD but is space-limited and you don't want to waste that space on applications that don't need it.

> Why would I even "install" something, instead of dragging/dropping a single "file" (yes I know it's a directory) like I usually do.

Agree wholeheartedly. It makes perfect intuitive sense: the application is exactly where I think it is, and if I move it somewhere else then it is exactly there, and if I delete it then it is exactly gone.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#383

Post by m463 »

mattlutze wrote: post #379

Solutions like "switch to ___ manufacturer and run Linux" are great and relatively accessible for folks in the tech/IT crowd. 1. What do we do for family members embedded in the Apple, Google, Microsoft ecosystems? 2. How do we help move our companies and non-tech colleagues off of Windows and the Microsoft cloud behemoth?

Buy the kids a raspberry pi.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#385

Post by II2II »

kybernetikos wrote: post #251
II2II wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And before "have you tried this *nix distro??" comments appear, they are still too hard to setup and nowhere near as user-friendly for most people on an everyday basis. Uh, no. There are many reasons why people don't use Linux. The easy of setup and use lines are pure nonsense. Many Linux distributions have been easier to setup and use since at least the introduction of Ubuntu, and perhaps earlier. Just pop in the…

Fifth reason - many many laptops have at least some piece of hardware or behaviour that requires fiddling to get to work on major linux systems. Sometimes it's power management, sometimes it's running with multiple monitors or 3d acceleration or the touchscreen, sometimes it's getting the touchpad to work properly or the fingerprint reader.... In my experience, there's usually something .

While this may be true, we should still be impressed by the number of laptops Linux operates flawlessly on. Very few people would expect Windows to run properly on a MacBook and far fewer would expect macOS to run on a generic PC. Yet people expect Linux to work flawlessly on almost anything thrown at it. From my experience, it does a very good job of this (at least in recent years).

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#386

Post by gonzo41 »

ForHackernews wrote: post #235
deadbunny wrote: post #16

Yet despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth - both in the article and in the comments here in the various threads - people are still making excuses for continuing to use Apple/Google/Microsoft/et al products because the alternatives are a bit rough round the edges. These companies have repeatedly shown that they don't respect people's privacy and people have resoundingly responded that neither do they. I would…

It's super infuriating reading posts from developers who are like "Well I would love to use Linux, but I can't because the touchpad drivers don't behave exactly the way they do under MacOS..."

I kinda pity them, I have a track-point.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#387

Post by bovermyer »

jrib wrote: post #338
zanny wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing said hacker culture spent 15 years buying inflated laptops and desktops from them ultimately for convenience to give them the market presence to do this in the first place. Its the same thing with Windows. People will preach all day that they won't make any personal sacrifices to try to avoid feeding literal cancers that are eating the software industry and are shocked when said all consuming voids take aw…

Next laptop for me is going to be from a company that explicitly supports linux. Probably dell or lenovo. A lot of people like to rag on Ubuntu. I agree with some of the criticisms. But the one thing they have done right is broker partnerships with hardware vendors like dell and lenovo. https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/overview/cp/linuxsystem... https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/lenovo-laun...

I'm personally quite fond of System76.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#388

Post by Nullabillity »

GuB-42 wrote: post #294
pdkl95 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I worry for Gen Z because they're tiny-mobile-device native. And the only usable tiny mobile devices are walled gardens. Without the ability to grow up playing with system level software, combined with the software industry's unwillingness to pass on institutional knowledge to younger generations, I fear we are already on a path towards a civilization that loses a lot of the technological capability we currently en…

Gen Z can get real general-purpose computers with a development environment for cheap. The new Raspberry Pi 400 is a modern take on home computers like the C64, but 15 times cheaper. Pi 400 full kit: $100, C64: $595 (1982) / $1576 (inflation adjusted for 2019). The computers are not just getting cheaper, educative material is easier than ever to find. Because modern computers are much more complex and do much more th…

$100 isn't cheap for a curious kid with no income, especially if they're not already sold on it as an interest.

There's a big difference between buying a computer explicitly for the purpose (even if it's cheaper), vs being able to play around with the hardware that you already have, for no new monetary investment at all.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#389

Post by megous »

sdevonoes wrote: post #289
II2II wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And before "have you tried this *nix distro??" comments appear, they are still too hard to setup and nowhere near as user-friendly for most people on an everyday basis. Uh, no. There are many reasons why people don't use Linux. The easy of setup and use lines are pure nonsense. Many Linux distributions have been easier to setup and use since at least the introduction of Ubuntu, and perhaps earlier. Just pop in the…

> As someone who has been using Linux for decades, I find the setup and user friendliness of something like Windows far inferior to to Linux. Yes, part of that is due to familiarity. On the other hand, some of it is inherent due to there being fewer restrictions with open source software. Non-tech people don't want (or don't know how) to "setup". The most user-friendly setup won't ever beat "no setup" (e.g., macOS).…

They can buy a PC with GNU/Linux preinstalled then. If I bought a mac and tried to install windows there it would be a shitshow too.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#390

Post by raxxorrax »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #143

What we poor souls didn't understand all these years is that we're effectively helping other companies to steal from Apple by running software that isn't distributed via their app store [1]. I think now that Apple has learned from iOS how profitable a walled garden business model is they are trying to bring that model to the PC world as well. Shipping hardware with their own processors is an important step in that di…

I hate walled in gardens and in Microsoft land it did get a lot of flack which I am thankful for. I doubt many Apple users have the foresight of a Stallman to see where their environment is headed.

There is money in creating apps for Apple systems, but you are giving up a lot in exchange.

Some developers use it for convenience but I would not say it is widespread and most are fundamentally opposed to use a mac.

Our advertising department is the only one with macs. Sadly, we still support Apple because every sales rep gets the whole suite. iPhones and iPad Pros (because the others are too small and you cannot work with them... what a new revelation...), that is a few thousand bucks for every employee that Apple gets. They even get the ridiculously priced pen (120$?) and keyboard (300$+). And our sales people still complain about not have notebooks, because they are superior devices. There is just the presentation argument.

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