1y ago

Would you agree?

105 comments

If Linux was dominant it wouldn’t be Linux. There would be more pressure to monetize and there would always be someone willing to sell out for that money. You can see this even in the Linux community today. I’m sorry I had to be so negative about it though, it sounds nice.
- Maybe it should say, “If the world went open source, and capitalism went away.”
  
  Even fantasy should have some limits folks c'mon now
- If windows didn't exist, linux would dominate with the problems you describe, and we'd still see this meme, but advocating for FreeBSD instead.
  That being said, I like them both. It's been a while since I last used bsd, so I think it's about time I give it another spin.
  
  I'm unsure. I switch between MacOS and Linux regularly.
  I'd reckon Apple's OS would dominate the "user friendly" space(not saying Linux is bad, just what everyone memes).
- Linux is already dominant on just about everything except the desktop, and it has yet to suffer significant enshittification.
  Edit: Well, a bunch of Linux distributions have suffered enshittification, if that counts.
  
  Does this also apply to Android?
- If Linux was dominant it wouldn’t be Linux. There would be more pressure to monetize and there would always be someone willing to sell out for that money. You can see this even in the Linux community today. I’m sorry I had to be so negative about it though, it sounds nice.
  This is a very Desktop/workstation-centric view of the situation and you're completely neglecting 3/4ths of the story. Linux is already hilariously dominant on the on-prem server and Cloud side of things. Like, it's not even close. Pretty much any website you visit, the odds are overwhelming that it's running Linux. Even Microsoft runs most of the underlying infrastructure for Azure and Github on Linux. Android is the #1 mobile phone platform in the world, which runs on, you guessed it, Linux.
  And it's already monetized to the gills. Red Hat has multi-billion earnings per quarter, every quarter, and Canonical is almost certainly going to IPO this year.
  It's already dominant in pretty much every space it touches and it has been for a very long time. Desktop/workstation is pretty much the singular exception to that.
  
  Yeah man it’s more of what you might call an allegory for how capitalism works. Language is my thing, looks like Linux is yours. I’m sure this information will be very helpful for anyone who might read my post and mistake me for an expert. Thanks for your service.
- Who, exactly, do you think would "sell out for money", and why would they have the power to do so? Linux is huge, and the pressure to monetize is there now. Plenty of people have been trying to monetize Linux - and in many cases, succeeding - for decades now. Why do you think being dominant would change that?

I don’t see anyone outside so it checks out.
- They are all learning how to use the terminal.
  
  They are inside trying to compile the software thst opens the automatic doors.
- Real

Not really. Having heterogeneity among operating systems is better than pure homogeneity. Say, if everyone ran Linux, and some massive security flaw was discovered, we would all be screwed at the same time. However, if we ran different stuff, and some massive security hole was found for just one operating system, then only a small portion of the world is vulnerable at once. Besides, more operating systems can lead to more innovation, as long as there is good competition between them.
- If the whole world focused and used just 1 OS for every system for a long enough time line, I think it would evolve fast enough to reach a point of perfection, where there are no security holes or flaws of any kind. I do believe that while programming has many ways of doing the same task, there is always an objectively best way to do it. Eventually the best way to do everything an OS needs to do would be found; it would be faster if there was only 1 OS to work with to reach that point.
  
  I do believe that while programming has many ways of doing the same task, there is always an objectively best way to do it.
  I've been writing code in one form or another for some 30 years now, and my observation so far has been the exact opposite: there are many problems in programming for which there is no one clearly superior solution, even in theory. Just like life in general, programming is full of trade-offs, compromises, and diminishing returns.
  
  where there are no security holes or flaws of any kind
  this in itself is straight up impossible to know or prove. when can you say your program has no vulnerabilities? ever hear of zerodays? finding the best way to do everything in software will never be found or stay constant either.
  
  I do believe that while programming has many ways of doing the same task, there is always an objectively best way to do it.
  Language has many ways of expressing the same thing, is there an objectively best way to do it?
  Is that sentence the best way to ask that question?
  
  Must be nice to be so ignorant....

The problem is capitalism, not which kernel everything runs. And the reason FOSS isn't universal is also capitalism.
- It's more complicated to make money producing FOSS, capitalism or not. Lots of reasonable developers would still choose closed source even without capitalism.
  
  Making money is a capitalist adjacent idea. The premise that we need money to figure out how to allocate resources is foolish
- The problem is capitalism,
  Perfect! Now if we had a way to end it...

Aren’t the majority of computers already on Linux? Unless you mean desktops
- Majority... yeah, Android smartphone and servers would be a really really big number.
- Most computers in the world are not desktops

they miss the statue of Linus Torvalds

No, you missed the homeless encampments, forest fires and car centric cities.
There's no apt install utopia.
- Because you have forgotten sudo
  
  I knew he was missing something. Thank you!

Would expect the architecture to be a bit more on the brutalist side of things
- The world runs on KDE (or gnome)

No, because everyone would be sitting around jacking each other off about using linux, if current trends are to be believed.
- There's a weird secretive compound on the edge of town. If you go up to the gate and try to talk to them they just reply "I use Arch BTW".

No place for bazaar. Looks more like corporations wet dream.
- I mean, you could put one inside a building, I guess. It's really just a very downscale mall.

Linux kernel
Nah bro, chrome OS is fucking ridiculous not to mention android too.
We need the other linux not just kernel.

So you mean we would have weird useless concrete structures everywhere? I doubt it

Until the moment someone finds a privilage escalation bug.
- :D
- Come to think of it that's kind of how society works no?
  
  Well not completly, but yes most of the servers run linux

It does run on Linux 😁😁😁

Is that image supposed to represent an utopia?
- Its urban hell, but a few more trees
  
  Ahh.... It's Gentoo

No, firewalls should use openBSD
- Why?
  I've tried to Google this, but it's such a general statement I can't find anything about it.
  Is it more mature in that regard? Sane/sensible/safe defaults for networking? More tools as part of the distribution for networking?
  Did FreeBSD (or it's predecessor/upstream/whatever) define the standards, so the implementation is more correct?
  Or is it just that so many firewall applications run on top of FreeBSD (or a BSD flavour) eg opnSense, pfSense, openWRT (is openWRT actually BSD, idk)?
  So, kinda a historical/momentum thing. With the benefits of wide spread specific use
  
  I personally don't have a lot of experience with this, but here's a writeup about OpenBSD: https://nxdomain.no/~peter/what_every_it_person_needs_to_know_about_openbsd.html
  
  OpenBSD is focused on being incredibly secure, and they generally succeed. Firewalls need good security.
  
  FreeBSD this focused on making a general use operating system
  Open BSD is focusing on security the developer insists on regular audits.
  Under most circumstances I wouldn't really care, we're getting a long well enough on Microsoft and Android with security updates all the time. That firewall man, it's sitting out there with its ass hanging in the wind, The only thing between you and a billion hastily written scripts.

All monocultures suck.

every building by zaha hadid
still not a walkable City
I would not agree

Probably done in jest, but this reads like the 100,000,000th “agree?” bullshit post on LinkedIn.

If everyone used Linux I would use BSD

but GNU?
- It's just that nobody gnu

Nah, industrial and infrastructure should mostly use BSD. And "Never see a command line" consumer OS's should generally be forks from Linux or other FOSS. Most Linux distros have come a long way and are ready for gaming prime time, but fail the "80 year old grandma who wants to digitise her record collection but is a bit unclear on double-clicking" test.

No, because that would make me stupid.

“But if we put all the world’s shares into Linux, the other Kernel Patron Units would be incapacitated!”
… I doubt anyone will get this reference.

Competition and choice is good, it keeps the ecosystem healthy and resilient.

No one would agree on the visual design, and most people would just want an unstyled box because it’s more efficient.

how easy is linux? i see so many memes now and i wanna switch but I'm not confident in it
- Linux Mint is easier to use than Windows
  
  Seconding that, made the switch and nothing broke since(almost 2 months now, ^o) . Can't say that for windows tho, where not only auto updates meant I had to wait half an hour to use my PC half of the time or disable them and not be up to date with security, but the OS itself was riddled with problems, sometimes just opening Firefox with a few tabs (like 4 or so) would bsod (and I have 16 gigs of ddr4 ram, so it wasn't a ram problem) not to mention now that I'm on Mint everything is faster, I didn't have to pay a license key and I know my OS isn't trying to fight me for my data.
- You can easily try it out by booting from usb.
- It's pretty easy imo if you start with a Debian distro
- Start by exploring Linux Mint or ZorinOS.. Both are optimized to feel like Windows.. You can watch YouTube videos about them to understand what I mean
- At the risk of analysis paralysing you.. But if you have an Nvidia video card, I would start with Pop!_OS
  
  I recently tried pop os but gnome did not seem reasonable for me on multiple monitors.
  
  If you have an NVIDIA video card, I would start with buying AMD or Intel instead. Attempting to use NVIDIA with Linux will result in misery.

It was all fun and games until the wifi driver didn't compile...

You mean GNU Kernel?

No esthetics wise it would be worse than the USSR
- No way. Plasma is beautiful.

Linus really fell from grace given the recent controversy and now probably isn't a right time to promote his work.
- I think the saddest part of the whole LTT debacle is realizing how many people confuse Linus Torvalds, the creator and maintainer of the Linux kernel, with some click-bait creating YouTuber who can barely operate a Linux desktop.
- Are you confused because there's more than one person in the world called Linus??
  Linus Sebastian
  Linus Torvalds
  
  Linus Pauling, "one of the 20 greatest scientists of all time"
  
  Dont forget the blanket kid from Snoopy comics.
- Wait, what happened?

105 comments