Apples making a shit ton of money selling all of us expensive ram upgrades that we happily buy.
IF the authors Mac is managed by corporate overlords he might be right about the battery. They are stuffing so much security and monitoring shit on there now that I feel like I'm running a spyware and toolbar riddled xp box. Even an older Mac without the corporate crapware is snappy.
Yeah. This is absurd. And, as if the reason for this “degradation” isn’t for user-centric functionally, and that the functionality can’t be turned off. This is just “old man yells at cloud”.
Agreed. Even knowing that, just yesterday I was surprised to find my M1 MacBook Pro still had 28% battery after more than a month on standby. When I closed the lid it was at 60%, so that’s less than 1% per day. Very happy with it.
No. Linux might be the best way to miss out on AI bandwagon. These new developments are here to stay. The years of privacy loss and getting worried with the shortcomings of social media and internet is over. We are in the new era with new challenges. There is no rolling back.
We're gonna be like those people from Rainbows End who are still rocking laptops in an era where everybody is semi-permanently interfaced to the net through wearable gear.
Thats basically how I see it already between those that only know abstracted tech and those who have peeked behind the curtain and know how the magic box actually works.
I'm not sure it is. I'm looking forward to several of those features (including recall) because they will undoubtedly improve over time, for all their flaws.
LLMs and "AI" features have made my life significantly easier over the last two years.
There have been countless times where I was like "Oh I remember there was a book I was searching but not what the name is."
and I didn't know what the name was, when I was looking for it, or the terms that I used for it. THIS is when I expect it to be useful.
I'm fine with taking snapshots of my whole PC activity, as long as data is stored locally. I take plenty of screenshots myself. People act like they have never used a computer for productivity.
---
Again, if someone has physical access to my PC, I have better things to worry about.
I can't remember the last time a new OS feature legitimately improved my workflow. Maybe Expose on Mac. Marginally.
I don't expect anything like Recall to make me more effective.
Stuff I feel that has made me more effective in 20y includes: Jetbrains products, GSuite (collab editing), GitHub and Git, insanely faster computers. But, none of these are really OS features.
Speak for yourself, Linux runs AI just fine when you want it. The big difference is that I get to choose where it lives, not my OEM (who let's face it, doesn't care how AI is implemented).
Sign me up for missing out. I also don't use native DirectX, first-party filesystem drivers, Office 365 or Dropbox/iCloud. I'll happily add AI to the list, if I have to.
I don't really get what part of the bandwagon Linux users will really miss out on at the OS level? It's not like you can't use stuff like github copilot and it's really only a moderate productivity boost in many cases.
What's to miss out on? Experimenting with or even building useful "AI" tools? Nope. Not missing out on that. There's Ollama (and a bunch of other) local (your machine, not someone else's) "AI" model runners native to Linux. There's also a ton of great Python libraries which connect just as happily to a local "AI" instance as they will to a remote API. Much "AI" research already happens on Linux. Using other useful tools other people have written? Nope. Not missing out there either. Same reason. Tons of great tools already exist to run "AI" assisted tasks of various kinds natively on Linux connecting to a locally running model. All that stays securely on my machine / network, and doesn't "phone home" (as can be confirmed by reading the source code of the open source "AI" tools by anyone with a bit of programming skill / knowledge). The difference is that I control when and how it runs, what it does, where it gets data from, where that data flows to, etc, etc. Not Microsoft or Apple, nor anyone else. Me. That's about the only way I can trust current "AI" to be used properly and safely.
we still cant purchase Linux pre installed from most vendors and for most people thats the biggest bottleneck: they will not go out of they way to install an OS'
Sadly yeah. I managed to install it both on my mom and dad's computers. I didn't push them, they were genuinely curious and sick of having to remember their Microsoft account to do some stuff on windows. They have been running Linux Mint for 2 years and quite happy about it.
But I hope they don't constraint themselves due to this, I don't watch their everyday use, but I know that Linux is not always easy on the non tech savy people.
I have been using an Ubuntu favor for more than a decade and find it easier than Windows when installing an OS. The user interface is about the same a Windows. It is not as easy as buying a computer with the OS installed but is not technically difficult to follow the installation instructions.
If you are wondering what it is like you can install it on an inexpensive USB stick and try it without installing anything.
Just the fact that you aware of a particular Linux distro indicates that you are a techie. Most people haven’t even heard of Ubuntu. Among those that have, many of them are convinced that using Linux means using the command line, which they consider either scary or confusing. It’s an uphill battle. I’m kind of surprised Canonical hasn’t done more consumer education / marketing. But it’s not entirely untrue, either, albeit the Ubuntu GUI can take you pretty far.
I like Ubuntu and I agree that it has a pretty good install UX. But I’ve still had driver issues even with common hardware, as most Linux users have at one point or another. Updates aren’t quite as straightforward compared to Windows/macOS, as it involves using `apt` to properly prepare for an update, etc. It’s a technical operating system, optimized for people who understand technology. It’s very good at that, let’s just be honest about it.
For non-techies to adopt Ubuntu, various changes will be needed. One of them is for Ubuntu to be an easy and advertised option on a new computer that a non-techie would buy (meaning, custom rigs or niche manufacturers don’t count).
To my surprise, you can actually get Linux Mint laptops from HP and Lenovo off Amazon these days. So the remaining question is how to get users to buy them instead of Windows computers.
Apple ran macOS ads for years, with good reason. Canonical needs to get their priorities straight. “Build it and they will come” works to some degree for enthusiasts, but not for the masses.
A couple of vendors experimented with offering it out-of-the-box. But normal people aren't looking to play politics with their operating system choice, they're trying to get work done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qj8p-PEwbI
Imagine if a clothing designer came up to a construction worker and told them that the fabric grainlines on their clothes were poorly aligned, and that they should buy something else. This topic is the software equivalent of that.
I don't see how "AI" is going to be more dangerous than the existing telemetry / forced updates / onedrive / icloud paradigm we already have in Windows/iOS.
The ship has already sailed for (non-linux) OS privacy. And it seems like most ordinary consumers largely don't care. Microsoft word has been synced to the cloud for years now, so I doubt that adding a msword AI is going to be the tipping point for people switching to Linux.
Honest question: do Apple and Microsoft currently capture passwords in a password manager, health info, SSNs, and the like?
I'm sure they do if you push them to their cloud drives or use their password managers -- which is somewhat applicable, but that's not what I'm referring to. I'm just not sure how panopticon-y they are when it comes to the actual content I type out or view in the browser.
With Apple having end-to-end encryption and never having your passwords known by Apple. You need one of your devices to access them. I’m not so sure Google and Microsoft can’t decrypt your passwords if they wanted.
Sadly, if you move to Linux and you DON'T use AI to help you learn the command line, you are officially Doing It Wrong (tm) - and your free time will judge you for it.
Consider local LLMs if you need privacy. They
1. Are Private
2. Are not (yet) evil enough to hijack your machine
3. Can help you learn cli with maybe 5x to 10x less blood, sweat, and swear words
I agree LLM powered search is useful, but I'm not sure it's the best for learning or reference. I still read quite a bit of man pages. Maybe I need the killer turnkey local LLM setup to roll up and convince me of what I'm missing.
> if you move to Linux and you DON'T use AI to help you learn the command line
Most people can use Linux for what they want without ever looking at a command line, or at least without having to look at it any more than you need to in Windows.
> As they add more features, we have less and less control over our computers. Dropbox, iCloud, Copilot, and all of Apple's Continuity features rely on the cloud, sending data back and forth.
I don't use any of these on Windows 11. I have complete control of my computer. I can cut it off the internet if I want to. I can block telemetry if I want to. Windows is a a very hackable system. I use Claude AI for my AI explorations. I'm happy with one caveat: If Microsoft 'recall' is not opt-in so is forced on me I'll switch to Linux, which I like too. It's not as nice as Windows imho but it works.
> I'm happy with one caveat: If Microsoft 'recall' is not opt-in so is forced on me I'll switch to Linux, which I like too. It's not as nice as Windows imho but it works.
At this point it's opt-out.
Every minute you spent not switching from Windows is a minute you spend endorsing their inevitable coup against your agency. Why wait? Why live in fear of that happening?
I'm not living in fear of that happening. I'm keeping an eye on it. If it crosses a certain threshold I'll switch to Linux. It's not that hard to install Linux.
> AI is already firmly embedded into our computers, powering text autocorrect, recognizing our friends and family in the pictures we add to our photo libraries, and so on.
The fact that the author is so keen to lump together all these distinct things that are only lumped together as AI for marketing purposes, yet speaks so strongly about how bad they all are, speaks absolute volumes. If the author just doesn’t like change and wants their computer to work the way that it did in 2003, they should at least own their grumpy old man attitude.
I like toying around with local AI models. I do so a lot actually. But the AI gold rush is starting to leave a sour taste in my mouth.
It's astonishing how quickly this technology went from "new" to being used by profiteers trying to milk it for every last dollar. I can't even remember how many new projects/websites I come across on a daily basis, which are mostly just a wrapper for ChatGPT with custom prompt. Not to mention what the bigger companies are doing, as stated in OP's article.
The irony is that even the "Wild West" of cryptocurrency (I know) had a brief, innocent era where enthusiasts drove innovation for the sake of innovation, not just profit. That guy that bought pizza with bitcoin for example, it was fun and kinda cool.
AI however, went from something most people had never heard of to full-speed exploitation. It's as if greed just keeps getting worse in this world. Everything is a potential source of income now. Apologies for the rant...
> AI however, went from something most people had never heard of to full-speed exploitation.
To be fair, the timeline goes a bit further back. Markov chains had their moment in group chats a decade ago, it's hard to find a communal IRC room without someone's Markov bot lurking around. Then came BERT and GPT-2, both of which had their innocent days of getting finetuned into somewhat-usable form. After GPT-3 was the "oh we can sell this" moment, and all the cutesy, semi-efficient research that was being done got sidelined so people could make their own ChatGPT-killer. That is the disturbing part to me; so many people (OpenAI included) abandoned efficiency for marginal gains. This seems to be the trend going forward, likely exacerbated with GPT-5; we're going to need bigger boats (servers).
I think the difference is that crypto requires a certain leap of faith to imagine its utility. But a language model doesn’t. So if you’re someone who doesn’t really care too much about the technology for its own sake, there’s still a descent chance you can imagine a use case for one.
This is true for everything now a days. People collect limited edition things speculating they will be collectibles in 20 years, they jump on new programming languages and try to develop the first libraries so their name can be attached to the de facto CSV parser for the language, they try to get on new social media platforms early to become the next influencer etc.
> The world is a lot less naive then it used to be
I have a slightly different perspective on this - I think people have become more naive than they used to be.
"Speculating on future value" in the ways you've described - either investing money in collectibles or investing time in writing fresh libraries, investing time and money in attempting to become an influencer, etc - is basically gambling.
Your odds of success are either extremely low, competition is high, or investment takes a long time to bear fruit with high risk (collectibles becoming worthless, new programming languages dying, social media following never taking off, etc).
Spending 5 years chasing trends or buying up collectibles - basically trying to get lucky - looks "less naive" when it works, but it's basically survivorship bias (or first-mover and other strategic advantages, etc). If you fail, you've sunk a large amount of money and/or time in your life into a bunch of "worthless" pursuits.
(And to counter the "but it's not worthless if you learn something" argument, that's true, but it's not the point being made here. And using that as post-fact justification for losing all your time/money is a self-sustaining problem if you don't consciously evaluate your opportunity cost in advance.)
Look how crypto started: people interested in it mining on their own when that was still possible. Meanwhile for most things AI its not some upstart hacking at home but due to the demand for compute from the getgo, someone who needs funding and therefore has to play the game as its being played.
There is a very strong push from OS makers (here mainly Microsoft and Apple) to increase margins via including tracking and ads into the system. The writing was on the wall a long time ago, they were kinda open about it when talking to investors that they see it as the next profit avenue.
The ship has sailed and anyone treating their own privacy seriously and not wanting to be force fed ad slop should move away to a free OS, Linux being the main candidate.
Linux has came a very long way and is now a very stable and usable system even for the less technically inclined. Almost all games via Steam (Proton) work flawlessly aside from some Ring-0/anticheat stuff. Most apps work great with Wine. If you're not using exotic hardware the drivers are rock-solid for almost all use-cases.
It is time to come to the light and leave the corporate OS hellhole.
Also Slimbook, Tuxedo, System 67 and many more. Hardly any excuse these days, And also agree it is so simple an quick to do the installations that it is not such a problem anymore.
Well it is not exactly nobody. I know a few people who were not GNU/Linux users and bought laptops from them, But yeah you have to do some research for informed buying, it is a must for anything otherwise if you only buy known brands you are just a fool anyways. But yeah more people should know about this and make informed purchases.
As for installation, my sister is a graphic designer and installed KDE Neon completely on her own about half a year ago. Also one of my friends before that did the same with Kubuntu. And they are far from technical people, especially when it comes to computers.
I think the biggest problem are our crappy educational systems which are these days basically Microsoft propaganda and training centers. They should all be teaching free and opensource only and not do free marketing for Big Tech which are nowadays increasingly just spyware/adware corporations. but these days they hardly even mention anyone else and thus just produce mindless uninformed consumers. But yeah I know this is a big problem to solve but a must to solve or else it will get increasing bad for society. And that is why we must also act politically and join political parties and push fort these fixes and improvements in educational and governmental policies to demand the software and hardware that respects users freedoms, privacy and other digital rights. And only this way informed and aware people will also demand people respecting product when buying and more brands that not many know will become known and the better known will be asked more to offer GNU/Linux-preinstalled computers.
I literally just a few minutes ago setup Linux (Kubuntu 24.04) on a new laptop (Framework). It was insert USB drive, press power button, select the drive to boot, wait a few seconds for live OS, run the "Install Now" app on the desktop, hit "Next" a few times, wait about 5 minutes for the install to complete, and restart and remove the disk. Can't get much simpler to setup a fresh system.
Before someone argues that “this requires enough background technical knowledge to know which buttons to press to make it easy” there is a point there, but distro maintainers have had that point in front of them for decades.
There’s now only one prerequisite for new users: the willingness to format the hard drive. Everything else is trivial and for 9/10 distros the screens are welcoming, clear, refined, and non-technical.
You have to go through a first run wizard to set up your Microsoft account, etc. even on a computer with Windows preinstalled. At least that was my experience a few years ago, and I doubt it has changed.
Hopefully now those people give Windows the side-eye since the advent of the Steam Deck. If you just need a PC for gaming, you're practically the prime candidate for switching to Linux.
Gaming is something you do on computers. How many Windows users only have their Windows system to play games? I bet that number is significant.
If we similarly gatekeep drawing tablets like iPads and say that they aren’t really doing computing and one day in the future an artist’s tablet that runs Linux becomes commercially successful, the end result would be that more users buying “computers” are on Linux.
I agree with you in principle, since a computer’s a computer, but the Steam Deck is so different and specifically made for gaming that it’s really hard to count it amongst the Linux fold. We don’t count the Switch owners as computer users of BSD after all.
And if you’re trying to make Linux into this paragon against the AI invasion, a portable console connected to the largest gaming store in the world is not a winning move. With how fickle Valve is, they’ll go all in on AI any day now.
The default Switch OS is more importantly based on Android though.
> a portable console connected to the largest gaming store in the world is not a winning move.
You're damn right. That's why Valve specifically designed the Steam Deck so it's not connected to them for essential services. You can install Windows on it, put another Linux distro over the base install, or dual boot with whatever ungodly combination you prefer. I don't know who led you onto this, but using Valve-provided software is entirely optional for Steam Deck owners.
> With how fickle Valve is, they’ll go all in on AI any day now.
Evidently you don't use Steam very much, either. Steam, the app, hasn't received a serious "new feature" since they spruced up the in-game chat app during the pandemic. I am about as worried of Valve going all-in on AI as I am worried of Joe Biden adopting serious socialist reform into his policy. It's not going to happen, Jack.
The presence of these affordances (allowing easy access to a Linux desktop, the ability to install Windows) is there to placate people like you. The vast majority of Steam Deck users will never use a Switch form factor and think let me pop into the desktop to install command line utilities.
And finally, Valve is conservative with many things, and fickle in many others. They have completely reversed their policy with regards to what adult game is or isn’t allowed on their store twice. Allowing AI-made content on their store is a question of policy.
If you can manage to monetize a game that relies on OpenAI, I don't see why it couldn't be made available on Steam. I also don't see why going "all-in" on those experiences would ruin the experience for everyone else; that's the industry's decision to make, Valve doesn't really make games anymore.
> Almost all games via Steam (Proton) work flawlessly aside from some Ring-0/anticheat stuff. Most apps work great with Wine. If you're not using exotic hardware the drivers are rock-solid for almost all use-cases.
This has been one of the problems with Linux on the desktop since the beginning - 90% isn’t good enough, the last 10% matters.
Obviously the kernel and portions of the user space are good enough, hence the success of ChromeOS and Android, and all of the problems are surmountable via throwing money at development like Valve is doing with gaming.
As it stands you can’t recommend Linux to most people without an asterisk beside it and it will never grow to be a real competitor until that is fixed.
Honestly, it is good enough. The Steam Deck is a runaway success, making it essentially a fourth game console platform, which is motivating mainstream developers to ensure their games work on the Steam Deck.
At worst you might boot Windows on a self-contained external drive to play e-sports games, but then you can use Linux as the daily driver.
> As it stands you can’t recommend Linux to most people without an asterisk beside it and it will never grow to be a real competitor until that is fixed.
There are a lot of "most people" who use linux with zero trouble, without even necessarily realizing it, because their family members have set them up on linux. Yes some hard core gamers might not be a fit for linux but these are not "most people". "Most people" just need the browser.
What is a computer nowadays anyway? It's just a web browser for most people.
EDIT: A colleague of mine had his grandmother on Linux back in 2010. He remote connected to update it and keep things in order. He said it was the easiest to maintain.
Yes. But as another poster mentioned, can your grandmother setup (and also maintain) a windows computer, keeping it free from malware etc.? I posit no.
Can they maintain and keep a Mac (no installation needed) updated and free from malware? Updates sure, but malware free? I posit no.
Now to Linux. My small sample size evidence is that more than 5+ yrs ago, I set up my GPs with Linux Mint, and they use it without any issues. Since they don’t have root, and it’s Linux, the malware footprint is near enough to zero making them as safe as possible from anything bad. It also helps to educate them about not trusting unsolicited emails, etc.—-But, although related, is for a diff discussion.
When I periodically visit them, I check that updates are done.
I’ve had zero complaints from them.
So yes… grandparents can not only use, but love Linux!
- AppleTV (I do not know a single living soul that pays for this service; why is it preinstalled?)
- Apple Music (which by-default launches when you put on your headphones, with a modal asking you to subscribe)
It very obviously has advertisements, by both Apple's own admission and simple recognition of dark patterns.
> I don't see ads on Windows either
Oh good grief:
- Windows 8: Sponsored content in Microsoft Store, Groove Music ads, Microsoft Edge nags, Live Tile sponsored content, OneDrive nags, Microsoft Office advertisements... hell hath no fury like the advertisers that designed Windows 8.
- Windows 10: Special advertisement modals for Windows 11, Microsoft Store nags get worse, Cortana serves Bing advertisements, Xbox Game Pass advertisements, paid video codec advertisements, worse OneDrive nags and whatever the hell "Microsoft Movies & TV" is. Office is a subscription now called "365", and Microsoft really wants you to buy-in.
- Windows 11: The entire news feature. All of it is ads. Your search has ads, your start menu has a "recommended" page with ads, your browser sends you ads in other browsers so you can use a more ad-ridden browser.
Long term Linux (mint) user here. As you say, Linux came a long way and for me it's perfect.
I'm thinking about switching to Mac. Not because of the software, but because of the hardware. A few years ago I got a MacBook from work, and that hardware just blows away everything else on the market:
- Awesome battery life
- Awesome sound: doesn't sound like any other crappy laptop speaker
- Awesome touchpad: I now don't take a mouse with me because this thing is so good
I didn't find any laptop that comes even close to this.
Last time I brought this up, people suggested things like "Just use a headphone". Sorry I don't want to use headphones when I can use the speakers.
So please, if anyone knows hardware that comes close to a MacBook, please let me know.
>push from OS makers (...and Apple) to increase margins via including tracking and ads
I'm not sure I see much incentive with macOS. They might make a few dollars from ads but less than the hundreds of dollars they make when someone buys a macbook because they don't like the ads in windows. I've noticed zero ads pushed to me by the os in ten years of mac use. Also googling just now has them as the US's most profitable company making $100bn last year so I doubt they are desperate to change their strategy by shoving ads in.
There are people in this very thread that claim Windows doesn't have ads, either. I think people's understanding of advertisement is relative when they only perceive a binary choice in operating systems.
Plenty of Linux users want the freedom to run useful algorithms including those classified as machine learning and marketed along with a lot of other crap as AI. I don't personally want the distraction of a copilot in my dev environment but I would rather have an algorithm fill in an image or delete a background than do it manually.
People using computing as a service whether it runs on an edge device they purchased or server they don't control or a hybrid is that they have very little freedom but they do have the choice not to participate.
Some people deny there is a choice and that privacy, self agency, the right to control and profit from our creative works are all gone. We are farm animals to be exploited by investors and should be grateful and it can't be turned back. This is a terrible philosophy and the endorsement of it by so many techbros should be a huge red flag for people.
Another step in the war on general-purpose computing [1]. As people who work in tech we have a shared responsibility to keep technology free and accessible for all who want it.
I've been about as much of an Apple/Mac fanboy as it gets for so many years—and even now I love my iPad Pro tremendously.
But I've gotten increasingly upset—irate even—about Apple's terrible missteps with the App Store, as well as the completely unnecessary lockdowns in their i-* platforms for power users. (I'd be more than happy to press a series of 10 giant red scary buttons to unlock my iPad Pro's true "pro-ness" and open terminals, long-running background processes, VMs, and a whole lot more…but alas, it's just not possible.)
I've been experimenting a lot lately with GNOME in a VM on my M1 Mac mini, and I'm extremely impressed with how far Linux UI has come. Since most of the software I use on a daily basis is all web-based (and if not it's CLI-based), there's not much I actually need a macOS desktop for rather than a Linux one.
All that to say: my mid-2010s self would be shocked to hear these words come out of my mouth: my next computer will be a Linux PC.
I hope that Linux will be the best way to live the AI dream. AI on Linux could enhance user privacy and security by giving full transparency and control over data, ensuring that AI functionalities are aligned with individual preferences.
I hope for a common system pattern where a local-first, frontline AI manages tasks and requests, seamlessly relaying them to either cloud services or specialized local subsystems, such as RAG-enabled components.
Linux is uniquely positioned to bring these advanced features to the desktop without compromising privacy. However, if Windows e.g. offers the ability to select any text, hit a hotkey, and seamlessly format, improve, and correct grammar across all applications, while Linux lacks these capabilities, Windows will gain the upper hand again.
Thank you for stating this.
I've found this particular article tends to have a lot of Luddites, perhaps they see it as a career threat or have a case of the green eyed monster https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green-Eyed_Monster_(disambig....
I honestly don't understand it.
I sarcastically posted this is akin to using Windows 3.11 Vs a modern multitasking OS and we should do that because humans can't really multitask, and it was unsurprisingly downvoted perhaps because it went over people's heads.
AI gold rush is just like the internet gold rush or the file sharing gold rush, and it'll settle down with the marginals vanishing, leaving local models and the big players.
Those who don't embrace will be left behind, like COBOL Devs of the 80s as newer languages came about (mostly VB and Java) and took their banking jobs (I've seen this first hand, and not ironically I've seen this start to happen with Java as a language now and the "old guard Devs", of the generation I am now in, but this is off topic).
Back on topic, Linux will go the privacy route, Microsoft and Apple possibly the sales and analytics route, but regardless of the negative side, people will be able to achieve their work and goals faster.
I use ML day to day, and for me my personal use case is to have 2 FE developer AI on tap. These have been https://github.com/wandb/openui and ChatGpt 4o.
Eventually I expect the former to be the more capable and use just that, but who knows, either way my FE Dev time (I'm not a FE Dev) has been cut from weeks to hours.
Good luck to any average developer without FE skills beating that.
Overall, i have never liked Linux as my main OS. i love it for coding and i tried a lot to get to like it but i came back to windows and I'm planning to try Mac too and I'm optimistic it i will like it.
Linux is better but you shouldn't compare it on aesthetics. The AI nightmare will be more fun, beautiful and easy to use!
Linux will always lose against others when it comes to liking how it is. UX, UI, "it just works" windows and macs win.
You should never ever expect someone to prefer it on only aesthetic or usability grounds. You will never like it.
But this is NOT why you should choose Linux. Linux is for Freedom, customisability and privacy.
With enough investment of time you can get something you will like but you need to choose and use it first. With enough investment and customisation it's possible to get it to be superior in usability but you need to choose it and use it and live with it. You will like it but only if you choose it over liking "better" alternatives for non superficial reasons.
(Note: For some non technical people Linux may be able to be simpler and better UX aesthetics and to use if configured properly)
> Linux will always lose against others when it comes to liking how it is. UX, UI, "it just works" windows and macs win.
It depends on what you're comfortable with. I've been using a tiling window manager with a config that I have barely changed over the last 3 or 4 years now. I find it very awkward to try to stumble around through the UI of modern Windows or Mac OS. And that's not to mention the absolutely obnoxious notifications on Windows...
It would take me a lot of time and effort to customize these systems to being close to what I'm comfortable with. It would honestly be easier for me to get working comfortably on a FreeBSD box than a Windows box. I might be able to hack something together that I would be comfortable with on Mac OS though.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 189 ms ] threadHas the author not used the m series Macs? Standby battery life is the best it has ever been in my time using laptops.
IF the authors Mac is managed by corporate overlords he might be right about the battery. They are stuffing so much security and monitoring shit on there now that I feel like I'm running a spyware and toolbar riddled xp box. Even an older Mac without the corporate crapware is snappy.
Malware?
LLMs and "AI" features have made my life significantly easier over the last two years.
There have been countless times where I was like "Oh I remember there was a book I was searching but not what the name is."
and I didn't know what the name was, when I was looking for it, or the terms that I used for it. THIS is when I expect it to be useful.
I'm fine with taking snapshots of my whole PC activity, as long as data is stored locally. I take plenty of screenshots myself. People act like they have never used a computer for productivity.
---
Again, if someone has physical access to my PC, I have better things to worry about.
I don't expect anything like Recall to make me more effective.
Stuff I feel that has made me more effective in 20y includes: Jetbrains products, GSuite (collab editing), GitHub and Git, insanely faster computers. But, none of these are really OS features.
I expect stuff like Recall to help me y'know...Recall.
There have been countless times where I was like "Oh I remember there was a book I was searching but not what the name is."
and I didn't know what the name was, when I was looking for it, or the terms that I used for it. THIS is when I expect it to be useful.
You and I must have been using different software for the last 20 years
same as all of Microsoft's releases post Windows 7
Sign me up for missing out. I also don't use native DirectX, first-party filesystem drivers, Office 365 or Dropbox/iCloud. I'll happily add AI to the list, if I have to.
We are part of this big game. Concentrating on "me" solely may not work is my worry.
if you buy a PC anywhere else Windows is always the default if not only choice.
If you are wondering what it is like you can install it on an inexpensive USB stick and try it without installing anything.
I like Ubuntu and I agree that it has a pretty good install UX. But I’ve still had driver issues even with common hardware, as most Linux users have at one point or another. Updates aren’t quite as straightforward compared to Windows/macOS, as it involves using `apt` to properly prepare for an update, etc. It’s a technical operating system, optimized for people who understand technology. It’s very good at that, let’s just be honest about it.
For non-techies to adopt Ubuntu, various changes will be needed. One of them is for Ubuntu to be an easy and advertised option on a new computer that a non-techie would buy (meaning, custom rigs or niche manufacturers don’t count).
They need an on-ramp.
Maybe that number could be higher if people were told about it and given an option when buying their computer.
With the harassment of cheaters though I barely have time to work on my own stuff.
Imagine if a clothing designer came up to a construction worker and told them that the fabric grainlines on their clothes were poorly aligned, and that they should buy something else. This topic is the software equivalent of that.
But also, technically speaking, most computers already have Linux preinstalled on them, it's just called something different: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/
The ship has already sailed for (non-linux) OS privacy. And it seems like most ordinary consumers largely don't care. Microsoft word has been synced to the cloud for years now, so I doubt that adding a msword AI is going to be the tipping point for people switching to Linux.
I'm sure they do if you push them to their cloud drives or use their password managers -- which is somewhat applicable, but that's not what I'm referring to. I'm just not sure how panopticon-y they are when it comes to the actual content I type out or view in the browser.
Details matter.
Consider local LLMs if you need privacy. They
1. Are Private
2. Are not (yet) evil enough to hijack your machine
3. Can help you learn cli with maybe 5x to 10x less blood, sweat, and swear words
I know it’s sort of a joke but I’m serious, read the manual
Most people can use Linux for what they want without ever looking at a command line, or at least without having to look at it any more than you need to in Windows.
I don't use any of these on Windows 11. I have complete control of my computer. I can cut it off the internet if I want to. I can block telemetry if I want to. Windows is a a very hackable system. I use Claude AI for my AI explorations. I'm happy with one caveat: If Microsoft 'recall' is not opt-in so is forced on me I'll switch to Linux, which I like too. It's not as nice as Windows imho but it works.
At this point it's opt-out.
Every minute you spent not switching from Windows is a minute you spend endorsing their inevitable coup against your agency. Why wait? Why live in fear of that happening?
The fact that the author is so keen to lump together all these distinct things that are only lumped together as AI for marketing purposes, yet speaks so strongly about how bad they all are, speaks absolute volumes. If the author just doesn’t like change and wants their computer to work the way that it did in 2003, they should at least own their grumpy old man attitude.
It's astonishing how quickly this technology went from "new" to being used by profiteers trying to milk it for every last dollar. I can't even remember how many new projects/websites I come across on a daily basis, which are mostly just a wrapper for ChatGPT with custom prompt. Not to mention what the bigger companies are doing, as stated in OP's article.
The irony is that even the "Wild West" of cryptocurrency (I know) had a brief, innocent era where enthusiasts drove innovation for the sake of innovation, not just profit. That guy that bought pizza with bitcoin for example, it was fun and kinda cool.
AI however, went from something most people had never heard of to full-speed exploitation. It's as if greed just keeps getting worse in this world. Everything is a potential source of income now. Apologies for the rant...
To be fair, the timeline goes a bit further back. Markov chains had their moment in group chats a decade ago, it's hard to find a communal IRC room without someone's Markov bot lurking around. Then came BERT and GPT-2, both of which had their innocent days of getting finetuned into somewhat-usable form. After GPT-3 was the "oh we can sell this" moment, and all the cutesy, semi-efficient research that was being done got sidelined so people could make their own ChatGPT-killer. That is the disturbing part to me; so many people (OpenAI included) abandoned efficiency for marginal gains. This seems to be the trend going forward, likely exacerbated with GPT-5; we're going to need bigger boats (servers).
The world is a lot less naive then it used to be
I have a slightly different perspective on this - I think people have become more naive than they used to be.
"Speculating on future value" in the ways you've described - either investing money in collectibles or investing time in writing fresh libraries, investing time and money in attempting to become an influencer, etc - is basically gambling.
Your odds of success are either extremely low, competition is high, or investment takes a long time to bear fruit with high risk (collectibles becoming worthless, new programming languages dying, social media following never taking off, etc).
Spending 5 years chasing trends or buying up collectibles - basically trying to get lucky - looks "less naive" when it works, but it's basically survivorship bias (or first-mover and other strategic advantages, etc). If you fail, you've sunk a large amount of money and/or time in your life into a bunch of "worthless" pursuits.
(And to counter the "but it's not worthless if you learn something" argument, that's true, but it's not the point being made here. And using that as post-fact justification for losing all your time/money is a self-sustaining problem if you don't consciously evaluate your opportunity cost in advance.)
Or rather more hopeless. You could get by in the past without hustling all the time like that.
Not just this, but also enshittify service, spam content, increase spying and in general disempower users.
The ship has sailed and anyone treating their own privacy seriously and not wanting to be force fed ad slop should move away to a free OS, Linux being the main candidate.
Linux has came a very long way and is now a very stable and usable system even for the less technically inclined. Almost all games via Steam (Proton) work flawlessly aside from some Ring-0/anticheat stuff. Most apps work great with Wine. If you're not using exotic hardware the drivers are rock-solid for almost all use-cases.
It is time to come to the light and leave the corporate OS hellhole.
> agree it is so simple an quick to do the installations that it is not such a problem anymore.
I wonder if people here are sometimes exposed to non technical users. You would be very surprised.
As for installation, my sister is a graphic designer and installed KDE Neon completely on her own about half a year ago. Also one of my friends before that did the same with Kubuntu. And they are far from technical people, especially when it comes to computers.
I think the biggest problem are our crappy educational systems which are these days basically Microsoft propaganda and training centers. They should all be teaching free and opensource only and not do free marketing for Big Tech which are nowadays increasingly just spyware/adware corporations. but these days they hardly even mention anyone else and thus just produce mindless uninformed consumers. But yeah I know this is a big problem to solve but a must to solve or else it will get increasing bad for society. And that is why we must also act politically and join political parties and push fort these fixes and improvements in educational and governmental policies to demand the software and hardware that respects users freedoms, privacy and other digital rights. And only this way informed and aware people will also demand people respecting product when buying and more brands that not many know will become known and the better known will be asked more to offer GNU/Linux-preinstalled computers.
At this point I'm fairly sure setting up the average Linux distro takes less time than the first-party Windows and MacOS welcome wizards.
There’s now only one prerequisite for new users: the willingness to format the hard drive. Everything else is trivial and for 9/10 distros the screens are welcoming, clear, refined, and non-technical.
If we similarly gatekeep drawing tablets like iPads and say that they aren’t really doing computing and one day in the future an artist’s tablet that runs Linux becomes commercially successful, the end result would be that more users buying “computers” are on Linux.
And if you’re trying to make Linux into this paragon against the AI invasion, a portable console connected to the largest gaming store in the world is not a winning move. With how fickle Valve is, they’ll go all in on AI any day now.
> the Steam Deck is so different and specifically made for gaming that it’s really hard to count it amongst the Linux fold.
That's funny, it has a KDE desktop and a graphical installer for Linux packages. It looks no different from my Linux desktop at home.
> We don’t count the Switch owners as computer users of BSD after all.
You very well could: https://switchroot.org/
The default Switch OS is more importantly based on Android though.
> a portable console connected to the largest gaming store in the world is not a winning move.
You're damn right. That's why Valve specifically designed the Steam Deck so it's not connected to them for essential services. You can install Windows on it, put another Linux distro over the base install, or dual boot with whatever ungodly combination you prefer. I don't know who led you onto this, but using Valve-provided software is entirely optional for Steam Deck owners.
> With how fickle Valve is, they’ll go all in on AI any day now.
Evidently you don't use Steam very much, either. Steam, the app, hasn't received a serious "new feature" since they spruced up the in-game chat app during the pandemic. I am about as worried of Valve going all-in on AI as I am worried of Joe Biden adopting serious socialist reform into his policy. It's not going to happen, Jack.
And finally, Valve is conservative with many things, and fickle in many others. They have completely reversed their policy with regards to what adult game is or isn’t allowed on their store twice. Allowing AI-made content on their store is a question of policy.
If you can manage to monetize a game that relies on OpenAI, I don't see why it couldn't be made available on Steam. I also don't see why going "all-in" on those experiences would ruin the experience for everyone else; that's the industry's decision to make, Valve doesn't really make games anymore.
This has been one of the problems with Linux on the desktop since the beginning - 90% isn’t good enough, the last 10% matters.
Obviously the kernel and portions of the user space are good enough, hence the success of ChromeOS and Android, and all of the problems are surmountable via throwing money at development like Valve is doing with gaming.
As it stands you can’t recommend Linux to most people without an asterisk beside it and it will never grow to be a real competitor until that is fixed.
At worst you might boot Windows on a self-contained external drive to play e-sports games, but then you can use Linux as the daily driver.
There are a lot of "most people" who use linux with zero trouble, without even necessarily realizing it, because their family members have set them up on linux. Yes some hard core gamers might not be a fit for linux but these are not "most people". "Most people" just need the browser.
What is a computer nowadays anyway? It's just a web browser for most people.
EDIT: A colleague of mine had his grandmother on Linux back in 2010. He remote connected to update it and keep things in order. He said it was the easiest to maintain.
Can they maintain and keep a Mac (no installation needed) updated and free from malware? Updates sure, but malware free? I posit no.
Now to Linux. My small sample size evidence is that more than 5+ yrs ago, I set up my GPs with Linux Mint, and they use it without any issues. Since they don’t have root, and it’s Linux, the malware footprint is near enough to zero making them as safe as possible from anything bad. It also helps to educate them about not trusting unsolicited emails, etc.—-But, although related, is for a diff discussion.
When I periodically visit them, I check that updates are done.
I’ve had zero complaints from them.
So yes… grandparents can not only use, but love Linux!
Not sure I see it on Apple. macOS is free. There are no ads in it.
I don't see ads on Windows either, unless you mean bloatware.
Apple has ads in Apple News+, which is a terrible thing for something you’re paying for already.
Apple has recommandations in their subscription services of other things on their service. That’s not an ad. That’s a recommandation.
Is there something I’m missing?
macOS advertises the following:
- iCloud (demanded in settings via a perpetual notification pip)
- Sponsored content in the App Store, Spotlight Search
- Safari, which will complain if you don't use it enough (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252412228)
- AppleTV (I do not know a single living soul that pays for this service; why is it preinstalled?)
- Apple Music (which by-default launches when you put on your headphones, with a modal asking you to subscribe)
It very obviously has advertisements, by both Apple's own admission and simple recognition of dark patterns.
> I don't see ads on Windows either
Oh good grief:
- Windows 8: Sponsored content in Microsoft Store, Groove Music ads, Microsoft Edge nags, Live Tile sponsored content, OneDrive nags, Microsoft Office advertisements... hell hath no fury like the advertisers that designed Windows 8.
- Windows 10: Special advertisement modals for Windows 11, Microsoft Store nags get worse, Cortana serves Bing advertisements, Xbox Game Pass advertisements, paid video codec advertisements, worse OneDrive nags and whatever the hell "Microsoft Movies & TV" is. Office is a subscription now called "365", and Microsoft really wants you to buy-in.
- Windows 11: The entire news feature. All of it is ads. Your search has ads, your start menu has a "recommended" page with ads, your browser sends you ads in other browsers so you can use a more ad-ridden browser.
I'm thinking about switching to Mac. Not because of the software, but because of the hardware. A few years ago I got a MacBook from work, and that hardware just blows away everything else on the market:
- Awesome battery life
- Awesome sound: doesn't sound like any other crappy laptop speaker
- Awesome touchpad: I now don't take a mouse with me because this thing is so good
I didn't find any laptop that comes even close to this.
Last time I brought this up, people suggested things like "Just use a headphone". Sorry I don't want to use headphones when I can use the speakers.
So please, if anyone knows hardware that comes close to a MacBook, please let me know.
Maybe in the near future Linux will run well on Apple silicon as well.
I'm not sure I see much incentive with macOS. They might make a few dollars from ads but less than the hundreds of dollars they make when someone buys a macbook because they don't like the ads in windows. I've noticed zero ads pushed to me by the os in ten years of mac use. Also googling just now has them as the US's most profitable company making $100bn last year so I doubt they are desperate to change their strategy by shoving ads in.
People using computing as a service whether it runs on an edge device they purchased or server they don't control or a hybrid is that they have very little freedom but they do have the choice not to participate.
Some people deny there is a choice and that privacy, self agency, the right to control and profit from our creative works are all gone. We are farm animals to be exploited by investors and should be grateful and it can't be turned back. This is a terrible philosophy and the endorsement of it by so many techbros should be a huge red flag for people.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg
But I've gotten increasingly upset—irate even—about Apple's terrible missteps with the App Store, as well as the completely unnecessary lockdowns in their i-* platforms for power users. (I'd be more than happy to press a series of 10 giant red scary buttons to unlock my iPad Pro's true "pro-ness" and open terminals, long-running background processes, VMs, and a whole lot more…but alas, it's just not possible.)
I've been experimenting a lot lately with GNOME in a VM on my M1 Mac mini, and I'm extremely impressed with how far Linux UI has come. Since most of the software I use on a daily basis is all web-based (and if not it's CLI-based), there's not much I actually need a macOS desktop for rather than a Linux one.
All that to say: my mid-2010s self would be shocked to hear these words come out of my mouth: my next computer will be a Linux PC.
I sarcastically posted this is akin to using Windows 3.11 Vs a modern multitasking OS and we should do that because humans can't really multitask, and it was unsurprisingly downvoted perhaps because it went over people's heads.
AI gold rush is just like the internet gold rush or the file sharing gold rush, and it'll settle down with the marginals vanishing, leaving local models and the big players.
Those who don't embrace will be left behind, like COBOL Devs of the 80s as newer languages came about (mostly VB and Java) and took their banking jobs (I've seen this first hand, and not ironically I've seen this start to happen with Java as a language now and the "old guard Devs", of the generation I am now in, but this is off topic).
Back on topic, Linux will go the privacy route, Microsoft and Apple possibly the sales and analytics route, but regardless of the negative side, people will be able to achieve their work and goals faster. I use ML day to day, and for me my personal use case is to have 2 FE developer AI on tap. These have been https://github.com/wandb/openui and ChatGpt 4o.
Eventually I expect the former to be the more capable and use just that, but who knows, either way my FE Dev time (I'm not a FE Dev) has been cut from weeks to hours. Good luck to any average developer without FE skills beating that.
We should do that too as humans can only work on a single task at a time.
:facepalm:
Linux will always lose against others when it comes to liking how it is. UX, UI, "it just works" windows and macs win.
You should never ever expect someone to prefer it on only aesthetic or usability grounds. You will never like it.
But this is NOT why you should choose Linux. Linux is for Freedom, customisability and privacy.
With enough investment of time you can get something you will like but you need to choose and use it first. With enough investment and customisation it's possible to get it to be superior in usability but you need to choose it and use it and live with it. You will like it but only if you choose it over liking "better" alternatives for non superficial reasons.
(Note: For some non technical people Linux may be able to be simpler and better UX aesthetics and to use if configured properly)
It depends on what you're comfortable with. I've been using a tiling window manager with a config that I have barely changed over the last 3 or 4 years now. I find it very awkward to try to stumble around through the UI of modern Windows or Mac OS. And that's not to mention the absolutely obnoxious notifications on Windows...
It would take me a lot of time and effort to customize these systems to being close to what I'm comfortable with. It would honestly be easier for me to get working comfortably on a FreeBSD box than a Windows box. I might be able to hack something together that I would be comfortable with on Mac OS though.