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The future of Linux

I'm not proposing anything here, I'm curious what you all think of the future.

What is your vision for what you want Linux to be?

I often read about wanting a smooth desktop experience like on MacOS, or having all the hardware and applications supported like Windows, or the convenience of Google products (mail, cloud storage, docs), etc.

A few years ago people were talking about convergence of phone/desktop, i.e. you plug your phone into a big screen and keyboard and it's now your desktop computer. That's one vision. ChromeOS has its "everything is in the cloud" vision. Stallman has his vision where no matter what it is, the most important part is that it's free software.

If you could decide the future of personal computing, what would it be?

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188 comments

  • An immutable OS that run all app whatever are their package distribution.

    Later a full OS rewritten in Rust with goods tools that share folder's content accross all devices and mass storage device as syncthing do.

    Let's imagine a button where you click on add devices, then you scan the QR code and chose which folder you want to share. :)

    • The sharing thing sounds like a security nightmare. And who the hell am I sharing files with anyway? No thanks.

      My vision of the future is having an os that'll install itself on any device I own whether the manufacturers want me to or not. I want to own the things I own.

      That's it. Everything else is fine.

      • Well, that depend a lot on how do you setup security.

        On nextcloud, i can see which device are connected to it, who, when, where and i get alert mail. When you add a new devices, as it is in the settings you will need your password. You might want to extend this security to usb storage with an isolated environnement. So all you need is a dashboard.

        The solution i suggest is also a security in case of hardware faillure. How many people do a backup and copy their important file regulary ? I think i'm just making their life easier by hardcoding it. For me it's as brushing my tooth, it's not mandatory, but it's better to make it mandatory.

        My vision of the future is having an os that’ll install itself on any device I own whether the manufacturers want me to or not. I want to own the things I own.

        Same but i differ. I don't want any kind of device to exist to reduce our footprint's carbon. Eg :

        I would limit phones to 3 models and remove all brand. No ads needed, nor announcement. Something low tech. There would be lot benefit on the software side and repairability. It's easier to maitain and it leaves our hand free to improve the OS

        • Yeah it does depend on how you set up security but...

          I never used to give a shit about being secure until I got I got a virus last year. This wasn't just any virus. I'm pretty sure there were people on the other end but it lived in my uefi, made it's way onto 3 android phones, a tablet, my laptop, and I caught one of my phone uploading custom firmware to my Samsung tv. Samsung claimed it was impossible but. It was in progress.

          Some glitch allowed me to resize the window that was being used on my phone to see their remote desktop application. And holding a button meant they couldn't activate that button so I was able to get a peak under the hood so to speak..

          Regardless I ended up needing a new motherboard and it took me ages to figure out how to get at the secret partitions on my pcs hard drives. I have to do a full NAND reinstall of the OS on my phones since. Surprise surprise. It lived in the eeprom (eeprom? Where the bootloader is) and factory resets don't touch that.

          I've been paranoid ever since. The fucked up part was (I still used windows at the time).that it hooked into the kernel at boot so the vrisu itself was invisible, but I could see changes to the registry it would make in real time, the one drive files it would create, the permissions you'd gradually lose if you did anything that could be interpreted as fucking with it.

          I'm not sure how long it was doing it's thing before I found it plenty of people I talked to didn't even believe any of this, and it was hard to prove because it was fucking invisible.

          So when I hear about security functions like you describe that amount to "don't worry we'll show you it's secure trust is" unless I'm able to really get at EVERYTHIG in real time and have it backed up, locally or another online service, I just can't feel secure.

          Even some of the most secure platforms have the NSA hooked into everything. Like. If it doesn't show me EVERYTHING I don't fucking trust it. Full stop.

          • That's just crazy...Given my IT knowledge, I would be a Bantha fodder...I'm not sure i would be able to see those registry being written in the system log as my main skill is doing a search several time until i undertand what were the correct words for this case and try few command. Let's see the first step would be disconnecting the wifi. And maybe use Kali ? Dunno.

            Well that's very scary, i apologize. Thank for sharing your story :)

    • Network shares aren't exactly a new thing. They exist now for almost exactly half a century.

    • Syncthing hahaha. Would just need a very simple system tray / settings page UI with just the "show ID" "select folders" and more buttons

      • Ahah yeah but completely integrated in the OS so we do need to remind people to save their important data in 3 differents supports. I'm pretty sure people don't do thoses saves. Except techies and people who learned it the hard way.

        And a better UI where you can setup the folder space as a disk manager. eg : don't save video on my phone. Limit the folder to 1gb on phone. And on external mass storage, share everything : 1tb

        I think there is lot potential and that Syncthing should be integrated in the GNU/Linux's core.

188 comments