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We own the hardware, but not the experience anymore — Big Tech keeps building smarter, more connected devices, but the user experience feels more intrusive, more confusing, and less human (www.windowscentral.com)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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The line between helpful tech and quiet surveillance is blurring — and our devices no longer feel fully under our control.

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[–] 28 points 9 months ago (25 children)

We need more real Linux -- GNU/Linux, with compliant copyleft licensing -- not Tivoized crap like they put on TVs.

Roku OS, Amazon Fire OS, Tizen (Samsung TV OS), etc. -- all technically Linux, but you wouldn't know it because they've systematically butchered them to destroy everything that made Linux good (the users' freedom).

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  • [–] 43 points 9 months ago (13 children)

    What's the point of being so pedantic?, they were obviously not advocating for more Roku installs.

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  • [–] -3 points 9 months ago (12 children)

    Because the distinction matters. The corporate raping of Linux has to stop being tolerated or else nothing is solved. The technical details of the kernel don't actually matter; the licensing and openness is what matters. Hell, if the Windows NT kernel got magically relicensed to AGPLv3 tomorrow it would instantly become the superior option just because of that.

    Linux doesn't fucking matter. Copyleft matters.

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago (11 children)

    Sigh. This kind of nonsense is why so many people get scared away from even trying linux. Who cares which distro you use, as long as it is linux it is a step in the right direction, and a whole lot of people (including myself) have taken that step very recently, despite some arrogant linux bros doing their best to gatekeep us away from even trying.

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago (9 children)

    do you seriously think roku, tizen, amazon fire are a step in the right direction?

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    Yes. Kinda.

    How do you think Linux devs get paid? The devices are locked down, sure, but there are strong incentives to upstream code and fund further development upstream. Linux ”won” because of this. You can’t build and develop Linux for such a wide audience and hardware flora with a bunch of hobbyists.

    As Linus himself said plenty of times - GPL2 was the correct choice. Roku, Tizen, Chromebooks and Amazon garbage are absolutely within what the developers intended, and the devs are doing the work after all.

    From a consumer standpoint, I absolutely agree with you, open everything is wonderful. However - commercial interests currently fund most OSS development. Without those funds, development stops and developers must take other paying jobs (probably closed source). Would be nice to change this, but then we need to completely pivot our funding model. You need to pay devs, either directly or indirectly (taxes, foundations, etc).

    So far, the open source community hasn’t been very good at figuring out funding models for consumer products. It usually ends with the development team needing to put food on the table, so they add a subscription and close down parts of the project. About two seconds later, the project has ten forks and the original author can’t buy groceries.

    ”Buy me a beer” simply isn’t s viable mechanism to fund open source. How should we do it?

    Personal preference: Slowly move the public sector towards open source, and require them to provide financial aid to products they use. Not perfect, but something that could happen gradually, without shocking the system.

    tl;dr: yes, but also no.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    The devices are locked down, sure, but there are strong incentives to upstream code and fund further development upstream. Linux ”won” because of this. You can’t build and develop Linux for such a wide audience and hardware flora with a bunch of hobbyists.

    if these companies were upstreaming code, it would not be a problem to replace the factory operating system on their products with something else. however just like phone makers, they don't upstream the driver code needed for the onboard devices to work.

    so far the only good I found to have come of it, is that after we find a vulnerability in their code, we can open a shell in the system and use ready made familiar tools to try to tame the devices from inside. until they force an update that patches the vuln because it got too popular, and you are locked out again.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    Agreed, it’s not perfect, especially not with regards to drivers from some of them. But:

    https://insights.linuxfoundation.org/project/korg/contributors?timeRange=past365days&start=2024-12-31&end=2025-12-31

    I expect that the ability of B2C-products to keep their code somewhat closed keeps them from moving to other platforms, while simultaneously pumping money upstream to their suppliers, expecting them to contribute to development. The linked list is dominated by hardware vendors, cloud vendors and B2B-vendors.

    Linux didn’t win on technical merit, it won on licensing flexibility. Devs and maintainers are very happy with GPL2. Does it suck if you own a Tivo? Yes. Don’t buy one. On the consumer side, we can do some voting with our wallets, and some B2C vendors are starting to notice.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    Does it suck if you own a Tivo? Yes. Don’t buy one.

    as I see there are no TV and only one or two smartphone makers that are not tivo, so saying that is equal to "don't buy home appliances, move into the woods"

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Do you think anyone, anywhere think of roku and amazon fire when they hear "you should try linux"?

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    read this thread again, please, because you completely missed the point. but you know what, I'll help:

    grue said:

    We need more real Linux -- GNU/Linux, with compliant copyleft licensing -- not Tivoized crap like they put on TVs.

    Roku OS, Amazon Fire OS, Tizen (Samsung TV OS), etc. -- all technically Linux, but you wouldn't know it because they've systematically butchered them to destroy everything that made Linux good (the users' freedom).

    Rothe said:

    ... Who cares which distro you use, as long as it is linux it is a step in the right direction, ...

    roku, amazon fire, tizen and co are all "linux based" operating systems. the topic was not about people recommending linux to each other, but about corporations misusing the foundations of it to further their greed. point being, something runs linux does not make it good. and that's where grue's call for real linux on these devices gets relevant.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (2 children)

    No they arnt, but also using terminology like rape is a huge problem. He's entirely right, the avg vocal Linux user is fucking insane. And a big reason there's still much misinformation and fud around Linux for your avg user.

    The worse thing for Linux is unironically it's fucking vocal users.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago* (1 child)

    Sure, because caring about users' rights is "insane." Because caring about societal effects of (lack of) antitrust and consumer protection law is "insane." Because having an ounce of goddamn self-respect and not wanting to be abused is "insane."

    No, I don't think I'm insane at all, actually. I think the people incomprehensibly arguing against me in this thread can fuck all the way off with their corporatist simping!

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    I agree with your morals and your end goal.

    How do you want to fund the development of Open Source? Because currently most of it is funded by corporations, in turn funded by ”corporatist simping”. The expectations of the average user simply can’t be fulfilled by hobbyist developers, and then we need funding. How do we get the Windows user ”John Smith” to personally fork over money to the correct developers?

    Proton/Wine/KDE would not be in their current state unless they got that sweet proprietary Valve money. In our current world we need to use corporate money to further open source, not fight it. Follow the stream and steer the flow. Given time, we can diversify funding and control.

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  • [–] 0 points 9 months ago

    What the fuck? I said I don't even actually care if the kernel is Linux or NT (or anything else) as long as it's genuinely open so the user can modify it, and you somehow try to twist that as quibbling over distros?! Way to miss the point by a goddamn mile!

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago* (8 children)

    People just need to install lubuntu or some Linux distribution on their pc. Tech companies for years have forced consumer upgrades for average pc users when it wasn’t necessary.

    I have a photo company in my town that still ruins dos off of windows 95 and has internet for email on windows 2000s for their point of sale machines is all dos. Even dot matrix printers. I was born in 1984 and remember this. Shows you don’t need the latest tech

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  • [–] 16 points 9 months ago* (5 children)

    That's great for the folks who have access to decades-old pre-enshittification technology and the means to maintain it, but what about everybody else?

    Continuing my smart TV OS analogy, your answer is like saying just to use a dumb TV instead. There aren't any dumb TVs anymore! The TV manufacturer cartel colluded to quit making them!

    "Just go live in the fucking woods like the goddamn Unabomber, eschewing modern technology" is not a valid solution for normal people! The law must be changed to protect them from predatory abusive corporations.

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  • [–] -1 points 9 months ago

    Continuing my smart TV OS analogy, your answer is like saying just to use a dumb TV instead. There aren’t any dumb TVs anymore! The TV manufacturer cartel colluded to quit making them!

    Yes there are, every smart tv becomes dumb as soon as you disconnect it from the internet. Just use it the same way you would use a monitor for your computer.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    The CNC machines I run at work run from windows xp. IT disconnected them from the network, so I have to get.dxf files from my engineer on a thumb drive to program machining paths from. Ain't that progress? No it's lazy.

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