One reader took the whole subject a step further and commented the following:
Horrible decision, but not surprising. […]
I’ve been expecting a similar move on pc’s.
I would not be surprised if, at some point, they try to ban Linux for “ordinary people”, declaring it to be for developers only, or worse, as a tool of terrorists.
Linux is already compromised in comparison to where it was 20 years ago. The god of convenience has been sacrificed to more than once. […]
(underscore by me)
Wow .
What´s your take on it? Does the reader have a point here?
Or is he unduly worried?
Unfortunaltely I´m easily worried, so I thought it might be a good idea to submit this theory to the forum.
Is the future of Linux really at stake (the way he described it) for us normal people
Hi Rosika,
I doubt it. History shows that you cant force the majority of ordinary people to do anything. They will find an escape hatch.
Regards
Neville
I didn’t get the point of why the F-Droid thing should relate to Linux on my PC. Separate pair of shoes.
OK, it might look very unfortunate for Android apps, devs and users.
But how should they™ influence any of my Linux installs? It’s far beyond my imagination.
Who would have thought that the entire internet would basically be controlled by four companies (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta) these days? Yet it’s true today.
The Macedonian Empire : the largest the world had seen up to that time - stretching from Greece and the Balkans, across Anatoloia, Egypt, all of the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia/Iran and Afghanistan and to the Indus River and the foothills of the Himalayas… Soon as Alexander The Great died, the whole thing collapsed… It did “Hellenize” the middle east, Egypt and even influenced Buddhism - but it pretty much fell apart…
Does Linus actually have another benevolent dictator waiting in the wings?
That’s a disturbing thought… I’ve only just considered it just now… Linus will be 60 in 4 years time!
Nah… in 4 years time we’ll have a perfect brain-computer interface and will copy Linus’ brain to a computer to be benevolent dictator of Linux forever!
Wow, that sounds harsch to me.
Grown up in a communist country and having read 1984 : makes it somewhat believable or easily imaginable.
If I look at the behavior of some streaming platforms, especially Disney+, Skyshowtime, they already banned Linux. Why? Just becuse they felt like so.
That behavior may spread among other service providers, which after all renders a desktop Linux useless for an average Joe wanting to use those services.
So they won’t ban Linux literally, but rather render it useless.
Big tech definitely has the power to do that.
Whether they really want to do it?
That is a great historical perspective. Talented leaders tend to be irreplaceable.
When they go, there is a vacuum.
It is possible to have a succession of reasonable leaders and that is probably the best we can hope for in between the occasional genius.
The biggest threat to running Linux on our own PCs is the way hardware manufacturers are trying to lock down what operating systems are allowed to run on a system. They’re using tools like Secure Boot to do so. Large corporations like IBM which bought out Red Hat will have work-arounds for this. However, smaller Linux distributions may not. One alternative is Open Hardware. It would be great to have an Open Hardware based PC, but the cost at this point may be prohibitive for most people. Hopefully some manufacturers will continue to offer purchasers a way to install the operating system of their choice on their systems. There are a few companies that specialize in selling Linux preinstalled on computers. I’m sure they’ll try to continue to find ways to make Linux available on computers and laptops.
Does that apply to custom built PC’s ?
I imagine that a lockdown-free-motherboard may become difficult to acquire, but surely they will still be needed for people who build Linux servers?
It may mean that one would have to buy a more expensive motherboard perhaps with a different form factor.
Laptops may be another matter.
It could apply to custom built PCs. It just depends on how custom they are. If builders are using the hardware parts that are available to them and the hardware is all designed to have “protection” such as secure boot, the consumer is stuck with it. That’s why I think Open Hardware is a better bet for avoiding lock down. I have my PCs built custom all the time including my latest laptop and their boot operations weren’t any different than an off the shelf computer or laptop.
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