SOULFLY98
@SOULFLY98@slrpnk.net
asian american expat
- Comment on What the Linux desktop really needs to challenge Windows 3 weeks ago:
It would be better to attract people who actually want to use an OS that is different to Windows, rather than ones that just want a Windows that works. Linux is not a version of Windows.
Absolute agreement.
Around the turn of the century, we used to say something like, “Linux is for people who hate Microsoft, BSD is for people who love UNIX.”
Not much has changed in the larger discussion about Desktop Linux. General discussion is driven by how “safe” and “comfortable” Windows users feel installing and using it for the first time. It’s a bullshit discussion.
It’s a weird relationship, like a new girlfriend who is always comparing you to the last boyfriend who beat her. She may even go back to him because he is familiar, without ever recognizing that you are better in every way.
Linux as a desktop is perfectly fine and usable on it’s own, without comparison to Windows. I’ve used it for over a quarter century and had a normal life, from middle school through postgrad and a decade-long career. My kids use it for everything including school and gaming and have no problems making friends and turning in assignments. People need to get out of the poverty mindset that Windows is the standard for a desktop. It’s fucking terrible. Linux has been usable for the desktop for 25 fucking years for those who want it. Windows itself copied many things from the Linux desktop, going all the way back to the first themes on Windows XP, and now there’s an entire Linux subsystem for Windows, all because Linux has been been better at package management and dependency resolution since the Clinton administration. Windows is fucking awful as a desktop.
- Comment on Leaker Who Apple Is Suing Says 'Screw It,' Here's the Foldable iPhone Early 3 weeks ago:
They’ve also become really, really good at outsourcing R&D to other companies. This lets them outsource the expense of trial and error, and swoop down with a mature product once everyone else has paid for it.
15 years ago they famously patented, and then leaked that they were working on a fingerprint reader authentication method, and then they watched the Android manufacturers bend over backwards to implement it so they could say they did it “first.” In those early days of smartphones, being first to implement something and then claiming Apple copied it was a big deal for people who wanted to be first movers (today they are called “techbros”). Motorola Mobility ate the cost of R&D, was never able to recoup the costs, and ended up being sold to Google for their patent portfolio. By the time Apple released Touch ID two and a half years later, Motorola Mobility was a shell of itself, and ended up being sold a second time to Lenovo.
Foldable phones have been a thing for a while, and Apple just sat back and took notes on what everyone else was doing. Surface Duo killed Microsoft’s last attempt at a mobile device. Now it’s a relatively mature market (we have tri-fold phones for two years now and tablets that fold into a laptop with a bluetooth keyboard) and now Apple will swoop in and bring the rest of the market.
The money isn’t in being a first mover; it’s in making a reliable product that everyone can use. It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that Apple made a trillion dollars while OpenBSD (upstream for a lot of Apple’s ecosystem) struggled to pay its light bills.
- Comment on Servers with Personality 3 months ago:
I love this.
Even a Raspberry Pi Zero is going to be faster than some of the physical beasts that served us pages back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s and they will run on just the tiniest drip of electricity.
- Comment on Why China Built 162 Square Miles of Solar Panels on the World’s Highest Plateau 3 months ago:
Oh look a western article about China doing something and not casting doubt on it with the phrase “BUT AT WHAT COST?”
- Comment on Apple has REMOVED the ICEBlock app from the App Store due to “objectionable content.” 3 months ago:
It wasn’t doing anything that Facebook wasn’t already doing, but it got banned. The CEO was brought in front of Congress and racially profiled, gave strong answers, and then got banned anyway.
Wonder why?
TikTok hate was a bot farm. The algorithm was always a reflection of the user.
- Comment on Apple has REMOVED the ICEBlock app from the App Store due to “objectionable content.” 3 months ago:
Because they are controlled opposition.
The only time something not controlled got popular was TikTok and you saw how quickly both parties went to ban it in 2024 after normal people started talking about Gaza genocide in every day conversation. The American Congress worked together to ban it even though they couldn’t agree on anything else.
It went from an Asian platform where Asian people in the West connected with each other outside the mainstream blue pill/red pill false choice and shared culture as well as history that isn’t taught, to “here’s the truth about Jesus” and “the world is flat debate me” after that vote. Now it’s full on MAGA.
Mastodon is harder to control because servers can pop up organically, but I guess Threads was a hedge against that threat.