PPS: Please at least TRY to read the following - and if possible, not just the title - with an open mind and in a spirit of tolerance. It was written in good faith by a Linux user who will be staying on Linux.
I’m frustrated. Once again, I have had to buy a computer I didn’t want in order to stay on Linux.
Some background. Compared to most people in this forum, I am a somewhat normal computer user. That is, I have not touched a mouse in decades, I use a small lightweight low-end laptop (which is not slow on Linux), and I do not take anything to pieces. To be clear, I’m a programmer and a massive FOSS idealist. But I’ve never been interested in hardware, and in this respect I’m a complete normie. Let’s not forget that for most ordinary people, a “computer” these days is the tethered corporate toy in their pocket.
For me this slide away from free personal computing is now getting impossible to ignore.
- 20 years ago I could buy a laptop (a Fujitsu) from a major European electronics retailer which came with a Linux CD - a Linux CD! (Kanotix, a Debian variant).
- In the late 2010s, I had a nice choice of cheap Taiwanese Wintel netbooks. So there was a Windows tax to pay but at least the hardware worked fine.
- 4 years ago, the options were getting thin on the ground. For 400€ I could find only one Linux-compatible X86 laptop, made by Acer. And since I didn’t have a Linux live USB, I had to (fake-) register the thing with Microsoft in order to get access to the damn web.
- Today, there’s almost nothing left. Intel laptops have all but disappeared from the budget aisle, replaced by ARM-powered Chromebooks and, increasingly, big Android tablets with keyboards. Putting non-spyware Linux on these things is often possible, sort of, but it’s a nightmare. You’re back to the 2010 era of ROM-flashing on Android, using repos from random developers and wading through impenetrable forum discussions. It’s a massive PITA. This is not the way computing should be done, and normal users will never do it even if they were capable. It’s hardly secure either.
The geeky suggestion which I can hear coming, “buy a secondhand Thinkpad”, is not a proper solution. It’s a band-aid fix with a timeout (PS: meaning it’s on the way to EOL). Hardware from the likes of Tuxedo and Framework is nice but too heavy (PS: correction, Framework is not heavy) and way too expensive for me. The Pinebook Pro is always out of stock.
And anyway, for years I have wanted to move from a laptop to a convertible tablet (like the Surface or Lenovo’s Yoga and Duet lines). It makes so much sense ergonomically and even in terms of maintenance. (Keyboards have moving parts. I have to change my Acer because it has a faulty keyboard which cannot be fixed except professionally at prohibitive cost. Crazy.) But none of these computers are easily compatible with Linux. It’s possible, yes, but hardly simple.
I considered, for a fleeting moment, throwing in the towel. After 20 years.
And then bought yet another laptop, basically the same model as last time except a Chromebook. I know I’ll get an OS I control onto it without too much stress. That’s a relief. But I’m more worried than ever about how this story is going to end.
PS: I should have predicted the bitterness and negativity and cynicism I would provoke simply by sharing my thoughts and feelings in good faith. Social media is absolutely incorrigible. In the meantime I will of course be staying on Linux, as I thought I described.
I see myself as being a lot more stubborn than a ‘pioneer’ in anything ;)
The day I realized I could not agree with the intense push toward always more invasive tech (with less privacy, less user control and more outside control, be it private-corporation or official/public), I acted accordingly… to the best of my limited abilities.
Indeed.
As for my own phone (I have one: I’m no Luddite, I just wish to stay in control). I use as a mere phone (and barely) and for any app/services I have no reasonable alternative to. Which means I use it for work/business/government/financial things (which is already too much, but like I said there is no real reasonable alternative left for those). So on that phone, there is no social, obviously I quit using all of them beside the Fediverse (that I only access on my computer), no games, no movies, no apps (beside Uber), no music or podcast (for the rare occasions when I want to listen to something on the go, I will use an old iPod one with the wheel). I’ve even stopped taking pictures almost entirely and completely stop taking personal pictures.
We are very similar, it seems.
With the exception that I’m totally addicted to podcasts. Literally thousands of hours per year, and I jack up the speed on them, too (productivity hacking is a mirage, I know, I know).
And photos. I take a ton. But only a few survive my ruthless culling.
I used too. Started as a little boy in the 70s… I quit approx a decade ago when people started becoming hostile towards my kind of pictures (street). It always was my hobby, not worth the hassle. Instead, I switched to sketching street scenes ;)
I feel this. Days are well and truly gone when we could play at Henri Cartier-Bresson. Yet another baleful by-product of social media.
Your sketching solution is a fine hack. Good luck with it.