Microsoft has ended support for Windows 10, and one of the most popular Ubuntu-based Linux distros is celebrating its "biggest launch ever" after a spike in downloads from former Windows 10 users.
My biggest concern is the whole “removing powerful features = user friendliness!” mentality that these big tech companies have been pushing for years.
Why make users smarter when you can make software worse and charge more for it?
The dummies don’t get the bigger picture, they just see “nobody needs powerful features that make things too confusing for me!” My hope is that they don’t flood Linux with this drivel - profit margin or not, it’s a toxic cultre that has already been created in commercial software.
There will always be newbie-oriented distros as well as ones for experienced/professional users. It’s alright if the former will go towards simplification, as long as we have plenty more keeping the tinkering spirit.
Besides, each and every distro has a powerful tool that can help you do everything: the terminal. No one limits you there, and unlike in Windows, terminal is heavily and commonly used.
And back in the day we had CMD that was pretty powerful. Things are great now but if Linux sees a huge flock of new users, and they become the status quo then we could be in trouble.
Worst case scenario: widows goes tits-up and everybody flocks to Linux. Solid ground for a potential commerical swing to happen.
Terminal is the only thing that is pretty much universal in all distributions. It is too essential to lose relevance. Besides, even when giving advice to new users, you can either list settings for each specific DE and possibly distribution, or you can just give a terminal command.
Linux doesn’t really have the profit motives that lead to enshittification.
I guess a bigger entity could try to start charging for… something… Support, maybe, but that seems unlikely to take off.
My biggest concern is the whole “removing powerful features = user friendliness!” mentality that these big tech companies have been pushing for years.
Why make users smarter when you can make software worse and charge more for it?
The dummies don’t get the bigger picture, they just see “nobody needs powerful features that make things too confusing for me!” My hope is that they don’t flood Linux with this drivel - profit margin or not, it’s a toxic cultre that has already been created in commercial software.
There will always be newbie-oriented distros as well as ones for experienced/professional users. It’s alright if the former will go towards simplification, as long as we have plenty more keeping the tinkering spirit.
Besides, each and every distro has a powerful tool that can help you do everything: the terminal. No one limits you there, and unlike in Windows, terminal is heavily and commonly used.
And back in the day we had CMD that was pretty powerful. Things are great now but if Linux sees a huge flock of new users, and they become the status quo then we could be in trouble.
Worst case scenario: widows goes tits-up and everybody flocks to Linux. Solid ground for a potential commerical swing to happen.
Terminal is the only thing that is pretty much universal in all distributions. It is too essential to lose relevance. Besides, even when giving advice to new users, you can either list settings for each specific DE and possibly distribution, or you can just give a terminal command.