Windows has been sending lots of data to and from my desktop as well, anecdotally.
Your Computer Isn't Yours
611–620 of 764 posts
Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours
#612Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you really used a desktop Linux desktop recently? Sure it might have some problems but Fedora for example is in no way "a distant third in usability". I haven't used MacOS for a couple of years but I can say for certain that Linux is not that far behind Windows and sometimes even ahead. I think the main problem is lack of application support but specifically for developers most applications are already there.
> Have you really used a desktop Linux desktop recently? Someone has to say this literally any time someone mentions problems with Linux Desktop, along with "it works for me", "my grandma uses it!", "you just have to buy the right hardware", and "you're using the wrong distro". It is incredibly tiring.
For macOS, you also have to buy the right hardware. You cannot throw it at random $300 Acer garbage either.
Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours
#613Yet 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…
Don't hold your breath. Majority of people would trade security and openness for convenience and profit. I think we are handing over the future of tech to these few tech giant megacorps.
Unless I missed something, we can still build custom computers right?
Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours
#614Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a new software. Take the note editor inside Evernote for example. It just slightly more sophisticated than a common notepad.exe, but it lags and freezes like it computes the Moon flyby trajectory by numeric simulation once every few seconds. Or the new fancy autocompletion module for Spyder python IDE. some stupid autocompletion requires TensorFlow running and therefore I just can't use it, because my 6 core Phe…
I tried Evernote on Windows, it was so much buggier and slower than the browser web app, it was really unusable.
I quite agree... The moment I find a simple note-taking app that synchronizes well between Win7 and Android, that moment will be the last moment I use Evernote.
(well, I use excellent DokiWiki engine as my primary knowledge base, but to make it available on the mobile phone requires setting up and securing a web-hosted machine which is too much bother for me right now)
Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours
#615What 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…
"What we poor souls didn't understand all these years is that" computing and information processing started out as tactical and then strategic components of military, intelligence, and industry. The central computing infrastructure ("the Cloud") and attendant closed/dumb psuedo-terminals (closed systems, walled gardens) is precisely the vision outlined in the 60s if not the 50s. Two unexpected events in information p…
> 2 - AI. This mainly threw a big wrench in the planned integration of Communist China into the Western system. AI enabled CCP to maintain control of the Chinese society, which was completely unexpected.
Could you expand on this or better yet, point to some reading on the subject? This sounds like a very interesting topic.
Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours
#616Earlier quoted context omitted.
My experience being born in 1992 is that as a kid I could toy with QBasic for instance (and then with Dev-C++ a bit later) ; as well as go peek & change stuff in random files (hello red alert save files :D) - can't really do that with an iPad.
I was a QBasic kid as well, but I think it was pretty clear to me even at the time that QBasic was a mickey mouse environment. You couldn't get into 32-bit mode, or dynamically allocate memory with pointers, much less blt sprites or backgrounds around at a usable speed. I'm not saying it's exactly equivalent, but there's certainly a perspective which could argue that a) the free JavaScript interpreter available on ev…
I get the argument that many kids are growing up today without necessarily touching a "real" computer, just a tablet. That said, as someone who got into PCs quite early on, I'm a bit skeptical that the world we live in today where you can assemble a working computer based on a Raspberry Pi with loads of open source software for probably about $100 somehow is less accessible to a kid who wants to hack around on computers.
Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours
#617Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Every company I've worked at for the last 10 years has developed exclusively on macOS. Counter-anecdote: I have had a Linux computer on my desktop for over the last twenty years, have used Linux primarily for maybe the last eleven, and exclusively for the last eight. I do not get the near-religious love for Apple products. Pre-OS X, they really were wonderful, best in class without a doubt. I kinda get the attracti…
You can’t control your destiny when it’s based on millions of lines of other people’s code, billion transistor hardware designs that you have never seen, fabricated by distant mega factories using closely guarded secret processes. You may want some idea of controlling your own destiny, but it’s a mirage.
Rome wasn't built in a single day either. If you want to eventually get to your destination, you must do the first step.
Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours
#618Earlier quoted context omitted.
But also Windows phones home.m and Linux desktop is still a shitshow (pardon the French) arguing over and over again about the same melange of disputes that should have been settled a decade ago... Not sure if it’s a sign of aging, but I’m losing hope and interest in most of these pantomimes /s
Linux desktop. I just use what's presented and get on with my work. I don't have a particularly complicated setup, but I found something that works and I've been using it happily enough for over a year having migrated from Windows. I don't know what disputes are being argued over, so I bothers me not in the slightest. Would it help if you just ignored the detail and just worked with what's presented?
Dual booting is still a problem. I just tried to install ubuntu as dual-boot on a separate SSD from windows (which I keep around for video games) and I ran into 13 bugs (I wrote them down!) within two hours - including two which caused fatal issues in the installation process itself which I had to run around eight times before it succeeded. Then it somehow permanently trashed the ability of windows to boot. After spending three hours trying to fix that I said fuck it and nuked both OSs with a fresh windows install.
This is the first time I've tried installing linux in about a decade, after using a stable dual-boot setup during university. Things seem to have gotten worse. It'll be another decade before I try again, probably. I lost two days of pay and probably years of non-grey hair dealing with this fiasco.
Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours
#619Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are happy to just ‘work with what’s presented’, why not buy an Apple device or ChromeOS machine?
There are many reasons to choose Linux over the alternatives that have nothing to do with one's ability to customize it. One example is the simplicity of system management. Desktop oriented Linux distributions tend to take care of everything from application installation to updates with a single interface with minimal interruption to my work flow. This is only sometimes the case with macOS and Windows. Android, iOS,…
So you are claiming that simplicity of system management is a strength of Linux?
Ok, we disagree on that, but I get what you are saying.
But, another aspect of what you are saying is ‘trust the vendor and don’t look under the hood’. This is no different from trusting Apple or Microsoft.
You are actually confirming the general point that Linux provides no benefit in terms of who you have to trust.
I.e. it doesn’t in fact give you a system that you own and control - you are at the mercy of a vendor.
Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours
#620Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Ubuntu 20.10 with Gnome 3.38 is a viable alternative to macOS, for developers.
I'd say Mint with Cinnamon, since you can install the 20.10 Kernel from the Update Manager.
You can install the hwe kernel in LTS too. Might not be a good idea for a normal user, if it is not necessary.