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Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without an online account (www.theverge.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 67 points 1 year ago (13 children)

I am horrified by what computers have become, from expensive magical tools to solve real problems, to ubiquitous shit-shoveling malware appliances controlled by some of the worst elements of society.

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  • [–] 35 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    Those kinds of computers still exist, it's called Linux.

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  • [–] 33 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    I've never been more appreciative than I am now of the decades of effort that have gone into building this free and open-source operating system.

    Imagine if we were here in 2025, with all the incumbent operating systems going to shit, but in a world where Linux didn't exist and there was no alternative that wasn't owned by a tech giant.

    I don't even want to imagine.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    The alternative alternative existed before Linux and still exists today: BSD

    In a world without Linus Torvalds, all those people who have devoted time and effort into Linux might well have found themselves working / hobbying in the BSD ecosystems instead.

    I think it's almost certain that Linux's niche would have been taken by it. It worked for Apple, after all.

    Or, who knows, maybe GNU Hurd might have become viable.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Sure, if it wasn't Linux then another project may have got the love and attention.

    I'm not glad it was Linux specifically, just glad there is a credible FOSS alternative of some kind, and in our universe that's Linux.

    You might think there's no such world where we wouldn't have had some credible alternative, and as reasonable as that is - because freedom and independence are things people intrinsically want - I'm sure if you flap the butterfly wings enough times there'd be a universe where we all just collectively decided that commercial operating systems were the answer.

    Glad I don't live there.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    Yeah. Look at the shitheap we had to settle with when Reddit enshittified beyond redemption. We're really lucky to have such a well-polished alternative to Windows right now, and I think a lot of it boils down to the fact that Windows was awful from the beginning. If a halfway-decent operating system like OS/2 had become the default then we might be really scrambling right now.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I find this alternate timeline incredibly likely. I had a friend in college who was all about SCO Unix back before they went evil, even when Slackware was the go-to distro. We would have a lot more BSD forks out here now, although NextStep (and maybe even OSX) would probably still emerge as one of the better commercial ones.

    As an aside: what I find amusing is that Homebrew is basically BSD Ports, served from a git repo. In 2025, it's a completely insane way to ship OS software to a single platform, but it does work.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Yes, competition is good.

    It is just a problem when the competition is big tech and can ignore everybody else as they get even more money from somewhere else like Azure.

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  • [–] 32 points 1 year ago

    to ubiquitous shit-shoveling malware appliances controlled by some of the worst elements of society.

    Hmmm, I wonder which background economical system we all live in that could explain why every single technology ends up controlled by the top 1% to make our lives more miserable and their profits higher...

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