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ohgr

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My Linux desktop experience...

I started with Linux installing it from floppy disks in about 1996.

In 1995, I was back on Windows 95 within a week because I needed to get something done.

In 2000, I was back on Windows 2000 within a week because I needed to get something done.

In 2005, I was back on Windows XP within a week because I needed to get something done.

In 2012, I was back on Windows 7 within a week because I needed to get something done.

In 2015, I was back on macOS within a week because I needed to get something done.

In 2020, I worked out I'm wasting my time on this.

I watch my colleagues and friend struggling with it. Lots of small papercuts. Lots of weirdness. Lots of regressions. Plus many years of server-side experience says to me "I should probably just use FreeBSD" in that space.

No Linux desktop delivers what the user wants, needs or expect. Only what the developers think they need and find interesting to fix. It's more fun reinventing wheels badly than fixing shit generally. Some people are lucky this aligns with their needs, but for most it doesn't. It's jarring and unproductive.

It needs corporate (or government!) drive behind it or that won't change. I'm not talking about Redhat either who appears to just be a holding pen for the above.

Got one of them. I ignore him most of the time. This has generated more ROI than his initiatives would have. Evidenced by the teams who do them generating a loss every fucking time.

His nickname, which he wasn't worked out, is the first half of a sexual lubricant brand because he's such a wanker.

They did this at my kids school. Then issued them all with iPads which half the software they need to use doesn’t work properly on iPad size devices.

Total fuck up.

As much as I'd like a machine like that, my 5 year old random Lenovo 10500 desktop is probably more useful as a daily driver machine than an older workstation class machine at the sacrifice of no ECC RAM. I bought it when it was 3 years old and will use it for 4 years then get rid of it before it hits the tail end, the power supply dies or something else goes wrong. You avoid all the weird problems, the depreciation, the energy costs running like that. And you gain things like relatively competent NVMe slots, USB-C and other luxuries. And the single core performance is better than Xeons of the era and earlier.

win11 ltsc works perfectly on it. With a solid background :D

Indeed. No data is safe or secure in such environments.

This has become an issue big enough that the US company I work for is actually removing data from US cloud providers to make it harder to get at. The European divisions have started data sovereignty projects because it's now a principal risk.

I'm out of the cloud as well.

As a notorious bastard I used to run C# code tests by giving someone a flattened windows 7 with the .net SDK installed and nothing else. Also no network connection. How the potential engineer dealt with it was interesting.

We had a couple of people shrug it off and do it in notepad and csc quite happily. They were of course hired.

I had a friend until recently. Really nice guy. Always looking out for people. Never said a bad word. In the last couple of years he turned into a nasty piece of work jumping on every politicised story out there and treating it as gospel. He alienated everyone around him.

It turns out that some people don't have a mind of their own and are waiting for orders.

Here is no exception. Look at the foaming at the mouth praise of the second coming of Microsoft when Satya took over. And where we are now? Look at the hype as well - blockchain, crypto and AI now. Mindless people slithering all over everything.

In fact I find a lot of the people in the technology sector to either be entirely morally bankrupt or lack any kind of self or societal awareness of their speech of actions. It disgusts me. I've been on HN pretty much since day one but the accounts last perhaps 6 months before I tire of it.

I moved out of the tech-first industry about 10 years ago and into a position of tech as a tool not a reason for a business existing and there are better people here.

As my wise but now throughly dead German grandmother said:

”Do you think the nazis appeared out of thin air? No they were everywhere just waiting for someone to enable them with a label and an ideology.”

I suspect something analogous is happening here and it’s similarly not pretty. Hopefully it’ll get nipped in the bud quickly.

My fellow citizens scare me more than the government does.