484
Big Tech is turning you into a digital tenant, but there is a way to evict them (www.neowin.net)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
107 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The shift to SaaS and Windows 11 updates means you no longer own your software. Here is how free software tools can help you reclaim control.

top 68 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 87 points 5 months ago (22 children)

The death of the PC market will greatly affect the next 50 years of computing worldwide. Corporations have successfully been pushing for a computer market where we rent computing power online and never own anything.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 22 child comments
    •
  • [–] 30 points 5 months ago (16 children)

    I don’t think the personal market will completely die out, but it will definitely shrink by a significant percentage over the next ten years or so.

    We’ll see a considerable volume of gamers move to thin clients, ditto for businesses, casual use (email, browsing, consuming media etc.) will continue to switch to mobile devices.

    PCs will still exist as a hobby for enthusiasts, but we’ve definitely seen peak-component sales.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 16 child comments
    •
  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    The PC market has shrunk 80-90% in one year.

    Even before that the GPU market was overvalued thanks to unusually high demand from COVID and unusually high demand from crypto mining the decade before.

    Even consoles are reaching the $1000 mark soon.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 14 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    The PC market has shrunk 80-90% in one year.

    The cost of GPU's and memory increased 5-10x in 1 year. What did you expect?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 12 points 5 months ago

    Also the old stuff still works great if you aren't running AI. Hell I have a FX-8350 and a 1060 which is just fine for most things....and I think that CPU is from 2015.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] -2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (10 children)

    I'd wager that in 10 years, it will be illegal to own your own hardware.

    Edit: pay attention to what's currently happening in the tech and political sphere. Big tech corporations are a new branch of government and the end goal that most of these CEO's want is a change to how the world is run. Read Curtis Yarvin's slop diatribes for an insight into the ideology behind the global right.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 10 child comments
    •
  • [–] 12 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    It won't be illegal, it will be unavailable. We just won't have access to anything cause they won't make it. Why make something they can only charge once for when they can rent the same equipment and earn multiples of what it would have sold for

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 10 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    You and I have come to the same conclusion. Compute as a service. I foresee it one step further - anyone with unlicensed personal compute that isn't tied to a corporate subscription will not be legal.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago

    Then I will be a criminal, again. If "they" implement the on OS ID, even if we are exempt from the identifying info on our systems (linux), there won't be anywhere to really visit online anymore and as I said (here? another thread?) once my pixel 6 is dead I will be going the dumb phone route. No google play, no QR scanning, so I guess no more browsing except for the few non compliant sites. Will IRC networks need to comply? That would be my last stop (00s) before going back to the 80s where I read books, went outside, and didn't worry about anything outside my little child world though it is hard not knowing what is going on in the world, tried it a few times. Hell, after my kinda "smart" tv dies (it doesn't require an internet connection, has not been connected since I got it) I don't know that I will find one of them that doesn't require internet connection just to play a video off my pc. I saw shit going south 3 decades ago, never thought it would get so bad in my life

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 16 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    Fearmongering garbage.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 14 points 5 months ago*

    A visceral reaction but aimed at the wrong person. It's just an observation of the trends. The fact that tech companies no longer need to sell to consumers, the intermingling of tech companies with the US government, the trending authoritarianism of world governments, and the moral panic being manufactured to implement age verification, the erosion of encryption, and the now-illegality of VPNs by first world governments.

    Go read some slop by Curtis Yarvin. He's the mind behind the ideology of the new right. That is where it's headed.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    Or free money. Take the wager! Why don't you fine folk both put your money where your sermingly-confidently-omniscient mouths are?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    The world is not America, there is no chance this would ever possibly happen.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    I admire your viewpoint and wish it was the case. America will use its military and economic force to bend the world to do what it wishes. It already does that now and they've shown intent to further this behaviour.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago* (2 children)

    One could argue that the personal computer has been dead since the introduction of the Intel Management Engine which is an internet-connected spy chip inside every computer with full access to all hardware that you cannot observe, modify, block, or disable.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    Imagine if an exploit was found for the IME. They'd have to recall all Intel PCs

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [+] 7 points 5 months ago (1 child)
    [removed by mod]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    You also don’t know all of the traces etched into the proprietary ARM chip in your pi. There are magic API calls to low level hardware which remain for “debugging” in all the major processor tapes outs today.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago*

    You also don’t know all of the traces etched into the proprietary ARM chip in your pi.

    Great point.

    It is now possible to get a Raspberry Pi equivalent with a processor from Rokchip.

    Rokchip's sources are at: https://github.com/rockchip-linux

    I find that most stuff from LibreComputer is as open as possible, today.

    The Renegade is a pretty good place to start exploring. With Armbian loaded, it's a serviceable personal PC for $35.

    The catch is that pre-built Raspberry Pi images won't work for it - because the CPU chip requires different drivers. So it's not a drop-in replacement for various Raspberry Pi recipes. I've built some of those recipes from source code on it, and they work fine, of course.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (-1 replies)
    • load more comments (-2 replies)
    • [–] 157 points 5 months ago (41 children)

    C'mon, microsoft. What are you DOING with your life???

    I'm no linux apologist. I BARELY understand what I'm doing. If ANY task needs terminal, then that task just isn't going to happen for me.

    All that said, it's time to switch to linux. And for anyone asking where they should start with all these distros....Mint. If you've never used linux before, start with Mint.

    Now I'm a bit of a hypocrite for saying that, because I'm on Zorin. There's nothing wrong with Zorin. It is perfectly fine as a starter distro if you're coming from Windows. It's almost equal to Zorin in usability. Mint has one edge that cannot be overlooked for newbies.

    Userbase.

    EVERYONE uses Mint, which means there's going to be a broader range of support. There are times I wish I had started with Mint. But I chose Zorin when I was new, and now my heels are dug in.

    That being said, YOU should use Mint.

    Ugh......I can't believe this is where we are in this world. Where I have to reccomend linux, while still not knowing what the hell I'm doing.

    Anyways.....use linux. Fuck microsoft. It's the only way to take back OUR hardware. They want to go full greed mode? I'm now using software which they don't make a dime on, and never can. As much as I hate the structure, I can't say anything negative involving bloat, or spyware, or anything else that I classify as "modern day bullshit".

    sigh Just use linux.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 41 child comments
    •
  • [–] 30 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    I mean with every day passing there's less and less desktop users anyway. Most teenagers know significantly less about windows than you know about Linux. They're on iOS and android.

    As an admin i see it as an opportunity to switch to Linux but the boomers are refusing to let go of microslop office so it's a bit of a fight still.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    The gaming PC sector is just fine however

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 12 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    Do more people use Mint than Ubuntu these days? I've been on Arch for a decade now so I don't know the popularity of distros as well as I used to.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
    •
  • [–] 16 points 5 months ago* (4 children)

    I don't know but it seems that Mint is pretty popular: https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity

    Anyway, Mint is the closest to Windows 3.1/98/2000 by its simplicity. It shows windows, you can move your files and run applications, it's all I need.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    Arch at around #15 btw. I would have expected it to be a little bit more popular than some of the other ones on this list but I guess I don't know what the metric is based on here. Downloads?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago*

    Yeah Mint is pretty good for a "starter" Linux OS. This is subjective, but of all the Desktop OSs, I found myself fixing shit in terminal and nailing down obscure issues a lot less often in Mint than other distros. Also, whenever a friend/family member came to me with a very old and "broken" laptop that needed saving that's what I'd throw on there. Modern Windows is way too much for the 4GB RAM dual core or whatever bullshit on those old machines. The only complaints I ever got out of them were that they couldn't run .exes and had to use LibreOffice instead of desktop Office apps, but that's about it. No crashes outside of legitimate equipment failure.

    I ran it on my personal machines before I got more comfortable. Now my ideal setup is KDE/Debian though playing around with cachyOS in VMs has been pretty fun.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I switched from popos to manjaro and later mainline arch about a year ago for the AUR. It’s a lot more streamlined then all the terminal stuff needed to install third party software on Ubuntu

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 child)

    And while at that, I recomend regular Mint (which is based on Ubuntu).

    There is Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE), but I have found it harder to use (while I can manage, I'm not that experienced with Linux to bother to troubleshoot and solve it [at least at the time], but I think it was dependency, incompatibility, or driver issues).

    Plus, the main Mint version is still the Ubuntu based one, LMDE is kinda a side project and usually isn't as up-to-date, as far as I know.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago

    LMDE would indeed be a bad recommendation for a newbie. Regular Mint benefits from Ubuntus better hardware support, GUIs for drivers/updates, PPA support and if you have AMD graphics it's not a newbie nightmare to get the most up to date Mesa.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 21 points 5 months ago (7 children)

    I've been recommending Endeavour because its "Arch with a nice installer" and it seems to go down well with modestly technical people.

    Especially since they can then pick their DE.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
    •
  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    Arch? For people new to Linux? Dude seriously ....

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    My dude, its.. easy?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (2 children)

    It's easy because you're used to Linux and most likely have been using it for a while (maybe, idk). I agree that Arch isnt hard but I probably wouldnt even be able to figure out how to mount my disks or even find the install iso 6 years ago when I had no linux and no "terminal" experience.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Yes for tech savvy people...

    Have you seen the average person? They dont even know the difference between a hard drive and a SSD, how are you going to get them to use arch?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    What's the difference between Zorin and mint? I'm on zorin right now to get my feet wet on linux. I am not a terminal user as I'm not technical.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    They are very similar, main difference I can think of is that Mint uses the Cinnamon desktop environment while Zorin use Gnome. Cinnamon offers more customization by default while Gnome needs extensions, Zorin has several extensions included so that's good for new users.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    Mullvadvpn is my vpn of choice. Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora are the recommended distros if using Mullvad.

    Mint isn't for everyone. A lot of picking a distro, at least for me, is will it work with the services I want to use.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 10 points 5 months ago* (2 children)

    To use mullvad on mint, download the .deb file. Double click on it. Click ok to installing it.

    Done.

    Edit (Download it off mullvad website if not clear)

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    You don't actually need the official Mullvad program either, although there's nothing wrong with it.

    I prefer to just load the wireguard config directly with network manager (or whatever your distro uses).

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    There is also cachyos, they are sooooooo smooth on kde plasma desktop environment.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    As an arch user this is a terrible suggestion. CachyOS is a distro for enthusiasts who are ok with dealing with the Arch way of doing things. This is a distro that no beginner should be using unless they are prepared to learn how to use the terminal and learn how Linux works. Anyone else is likely to be scared away because it is "too difficult".

    OP is right, just use Mint.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago*

    If you can use a program like Octopi I think Cachy is just as friendly as any distro. Certainly moreso than any debian derivative.

    And its bleeding edge enough to make a great gaming OS

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    I never denied Mint. definitely recommend it too. Although for gaming I had a lot of issues. I am definitelt not an expert by any means, so I would also put my hat in to say cachyos with kde plasma as the desktop environment is pretty beginner friendly. I understand the arch way is difficult, but in my ignorant (as I dont know linux terminal talk too well) perspective, i think kde plasma on cachyos is a good option to look into at the least. 'A terrible suggestion' feels a slight stretch. It isn't too complicated, im saying this as a beginner

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    If you're a Linux KDE gaming newbie, Bazzite is a good choice.

    They have really polished the immutable Linux thing, and it is honestly the smoothest Linux experience I've ever had.

    CachyOS (and Garuda, and Manjaro, and EndeavourOS) are fairly user-friendly at first, but then something bad happens and you're on your own with Arch. It's like walking on a spring meadow and then the hungry bear comes out. Very unexpected and very troublesome.

    Still, I hope it works good for you. But, same as other commenter, I would absolutely not recommend CachyOS for Linux beginners. More often than not, it doesn't end well.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    I would argue for Ubuntu because a lot of libraries and schools have used Ubuntu as an alternative operating system in the past, at least in the school district I went to, so the early connection/familiarity is already there.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (1 reply)
    load more comments
    view more: next ›