5 years already? Shit, I’m old.
5 years already? Shit, I’m old.
Gnu can be used to describe the gnu project, the gnu license or the gnu coreutils. In this context, they mean that Linux by itself isn’t enough to be the a free desktop, and needs the gnu software to be the system they care about. (There can be controversies on whether gnu is needed or not, since it’s possible to create a distro without the coreutils, but let’s not get you confused right now)
Ah, I see. But in that case, won’t the server have access to my messages in plain text?
In that case, won’t the server have access to my credentials?
We are trying, but the bootloader seems to be unlockabe, and that’s pushing us back.
But what do you do when services and institutions in general require you to use whatsapp? That’s what is mostly keeping me from deleting that app.
I have been looking at this possibility, but running a bridge means that I will need to self host a service, which adds one more point of failure, while not really removing whatsapp from my life, so I’m not convinced it’s a good alternative.
Sometimes they do, but then they will take much more time to give you a response.
Sometimes, they simply don’t have n alternative, like my city’s local service for reporting broken streetlights.
And no, I can’t simply stop using or ask friends to move to an alternative. I’m from Brazil and that thing is so popular and mainstream, that even stores or public services use it.
Just this week, I had to report an animal abuse case to the authorities, and the official communication channel I had to use was through whatsapp.
It’s sad to see how dependent of a single proprietary service for something so important we allowed ourselves to become…
But still good reasons, anyway.
That’s amazing.
Here in Brazil, we had the government encouraging free software in the 2000s, but the projects and policies were all abandoned.
And to think we could have a similar adoption to yours today… sigh…
Back then, people didn’t understand how such projects give benefits in a long timeframe, and wanted immediate results, something impossible.
Even more important is to see the windows downtrend. We need competition, keep it going!
I feel the same. I can’t recommend it to anyone anymore.
Congrats!
Enjoy the freedom and don’t be afraid to ask for help. In time, you will see yourself helping others and contributing to the community.
I see now. You made some good points. Indeed, the targeted userbase doesn’t care about how the system works, so they may have a conflict in there,
I used to think like that, but now I think about it in a different way.
These small distros often come with new approaches the big distros aren’t willing to risk yet, or provide an alternative to their dependence. Most of them will fail, but they’re important for bringing innovation to the linux-based OSes space.
Small distros come and go, but sometimes, even if they fail, their proposed idea gets integrated into the main ones, and that’s a bonus.
That particular one might not be so innovative, because there are already big distros pushing the immutable system concept, but, is doing the same while maintained by community effort, uses debian as a base, and focus on ease of usage. I think it still adds some value to the community
Such definitionsaree becoming more and more complicated. I think we should standardize a name for the family of systems we use, or it will become uglier and uglier.
Recently, I had to wrote am academic work in the area, and an entire section was dedicated to explaining this controversy and defining what kind of system I was talking about, so that the work is reproducible.
I joined the community before the 1% mark. It has been such a nice journey.
I agree. Perhaps I got confused when reading the other comment.
Small distros aren’t good ones for beginners, because support plays a great role into they first experiences.
Nice article! Are you the author? If so, I’d like to give you a suggestion: the part about the deepin Linux story and technical background is interesting enough to be its own article. That way, it would be more findable on web searchers and probably help a lot of people who look for information on it, which is a bit scarce in english.