Do you feel non-free distros are a gateway drug to software freedom?
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In my case, it was, but there is a mindset that in order to use a Workstation OS that's not Windows or MacOS, you need applications with "Professional Support", they just want one number to call. So instead of using Blender, (of which is starting to get pro support) they just get Maya or instead of using Libre Office, they get WPS Office not because the free software is not to their standards, but because they think monopolized support is a good thing. RHEL/CentOS, sure it half-asses software freedom, but if you have a problem with RHEL, you can go to the CentOS community and I bet them competing with CentOS make their support better especially with their open certification.
I feel, if people try to switch to a less unfree platform, I feel the worst mentality is liking monopolized support and infecting even that corner of the semi-free software community. Though I respect people's freedom to choose, I feel the mentality of using monopolized support should be "Ugg, I need it to pay the bills, but I'm still exploring alternatives" or "ugg, I hate how this 20-year-old game is non-free. I can't wait for copyright laws to be abolished and the reverse-engineering community to have a field day with this". (I see it happing within my natural lifetime, copyright is a product of the feudalism guilds systems, it's just idea monopolization. People will eventually find out it's a spook.)
There is no "monopolized support" with free software. Any company (or freelance developer) can provide support for any free software, down to modifying the source (to correct bugs or implement specific features). The support activity can even be "insourced".
Companies actually like free software for the freedom of support it guarantees. See https://cnll.fr/media/2019_CNLL-Syntec-Systematic-Open-Source-Study.pdf for a recent study, which focuses on France (I am French) but gives as well worldwide numbers (slides 6 and 7). Slide 20 reports on answers to the question "What are your motivations for using Open Source in your company?". The three take-away messages on that slide are:
* Open Source facilitates customization and specific development which organizations need to improve their customers’ experience. Independence remains a key criterion.
* In the 2017 study, cost reduction was the first driver for using Open Source. In 2019, the main drivers are customization and technological independence.
* We are currently seeing an increase in the reliability and security offered by Open Source.
In conclusion, it does not look like "they think monopolized support is a good thing". At least in France.
Well, there's the ambiguous term of "open source" and a lot of people think "If I can download the source code, it's open source".
But This video was made for people with a backwards mentality of centralization being a good thing and gives it legitimacy. Because that's all they know. It's like trying to convince somebody deep into soviet propaganda that their centrally planned utopia doesn't work is hard and they don't notice how bad things are until you boil the frog too fast.
A lot of people have trouble wrapping their minds around the concept of paid 3rd party support firms.
You pay the Windows Tax and you get shit service. When you buy a product with support bundled in, that support is a ponzi scheme. It assumes that there's going to be more profits than clients burdening the system. So, I feel hired support technicians should like chefs, if you can't cook, either sign checks to your chef or you take cooking workshops and ask other people trying cook for themselves.
Abolishing copyright laws don't solve the "20-years-old non-free game" problem. Besides copyright, there are other enemies to software freedom, including software patents and EULA. (See RMS's article: Why Swedish Pirate Party backfires on free software)
Without copyright, free software lose copyleft protection and enter public domain. They will be immediately turned to non-free software. By contrast, non-free software are still non-free even if they enter public domain, because they can still be covered by patents, EULA, etc.
Each of these (copyright, patent, EULA) is backed by laws. In 1976, US Copyright Act significantly expanded the durance and coverage of copyright. Starting 1980s, US Patent Act allowed software patents. In 1986, CFAA turned EULA to a powerful lawsuit weapon. And in 1998, DMCA made circumventing DRM illegal.
I want to play Soul Surfer (2002 SEGA) very very much.
> https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=12879
Soul Surfer was produced by Sega in 2002. Sega released 587 different machines in our database under this trade name, starting in 1936. Other machines made by Sega during the time period Soul Surfer was produced include Lupin the 3rd The Typing, House of The Dead 3, Virtua Striker 3, Beach...
Can I play it on Trisquel? I do not mind contacting and persuading and paying SEGA. I encountered a bunch of "one more step" when I googled "SEGA Soul Surfer ROM".
Yes it absolutely is. I was hooked on Linux because of Gallium OS, a variant of Ubuntu specifically made for Chromebooks. At the time I had no money and my windows computer broke so I bought a very cheap used chromebook.
Chrome OS is total crap and I wanted to install SageMath to do some calculations. First I put Ubuntu on there, but the hardware wasn't supported. Then I discovered Gallium OS which made everything work perfectly. For the very first time I felt like I was actually using a computer in fact. I was shocked at how this "temporary" laptop I picked up for $50 suddenly became far more usable and productive than any other computer I had ever owned (which was like, two other computers at the time)
Anyway I seriously got addicted after that and would not have learned about free software, or Trisquel or any of it without the fact that Linux served a very practical non idealistic purpose: making my chromebook into a perfectly good real computer. I guess I was just shocked at how truly limited Chrome OS was, ON PURPOSE!! and that's what really opened my eyes and got me reading about things. Eventually I decided to go totally free as much as possible but it was a while before I could afford a new computer which allowed me to change the wifi card.
For a while I actually used a wifi dongle but it is surprisingly annoying and unreliable.
NO. It is a gate of the hell for them. Or the prediction of the hell or kind of a virtual experiencing of the hell where they will experience in after they come back to the OS or something, like alcoholics. At least maybe for most people. But maybe it was the only way for us to learn life and death without normal parents. By the way, I have written about it but why Japanese translation stuff is such poor compared to of other languages in free software world? E.g. Abrowser has more than few dozens dictionary extensions of each language but not Japanese. I want to stop using Google translation but it would be the biggest loss of my time. ****
haha what do you mean a gate of hell?
Maybe Jodiendosan (you may not know) can explain it better than me. He might have had a car accident or something. Maybe he had a mustang and went to a trip, if i remember correctly. If he came back peacefully, let's ask him.
Free software is used more often by companies who know what they are doing.
Almost the entirety of Amazon Web Services are hosted on GNU+Linux. Militaries, Banks and journalists all around the world use the same encryption software as the rest of us. When the risks are high, companies and institutions have chosen free software already..
The underlying architecture for MacOS, Windows, iOS, Android all use free software to build their platform upon.
They then proceed to use the full weight of their company to make exclusive features which are proprietary and begin to form walls around their own gardens. For many individuals who were brought up in these walled gardens its difficult to throw away everything about computers that they thought they knew. Its difficult to switch to free software because Google, Microsoft and Apple all use their fortune 500 companies to keep people within their sphere of influence and to not question their rule.
Also for me personally, I feel gaming on GNU+Linux has been difficult. It along with, at this moment in time, a lack of free phone software is holding me back.
This is why software freedom is impossible in a capitalist world. Capitalist always try to maximize their profits by mistreating users. And their mistreating is strongly backed by their governments, courts, and armies.
Unfortunately there's no socialist country in recent 40 years any more. Our very first mission is to "Make China Socialist Again"...
>This is why software freedom is impossible in a capitalist world.
Capitalism is only a way of voting with your wallet. If more people stopped paying for crap like Windows and Mac they would go extinct. Those same capitalist companies are using free software, and also often times the biggest contributors to free software development are corporations.
Then again I don't know what the best system is, each has flaws and benefits. Socialism also caused millions to starve, in China and Russia. I don't know if it can ever be applied in the real world besides theories.
Actually, capitalism and socialism are both flawed in their own ways.
My belief is that we need both at the same time. Most countries should follow the logic of, a balance of capitalism and socialism.
Not say "Captialism is evil or good and socialism is good or evil or vice versa, etc..."
Although many countries that aren't european like to take the stance of capitalism is good and socialism is evil.
*cough amer *cough ica *cough
for an example, ;p
In reality that is unbalanced and so is the reverse.
Balance is key!
So there's that.
if people starved from socialism, that just means there wasn't enough of capitalism to balance it out.
Balance is of course tricky, because of big corporations that use money to bribe governments, but it shouldn't stop us from trying to make a balanced approach.
Anywho, that's some pearls of wisdom for ya.
If taken as you asked, than I would believe so. We can successfully describe non-fully-free distros as some sort of a gateway.
I believe that having partial contact with free software is better than no contact at all.
I am always worried that when someone "from outside" tries an ethical distro, they will get upset about sth like their GPU not working and go back to using Windoze. Just like in that "Downfall" parody I can't find rn, where Hitler rants after learning, that ppl uninstalled GNU/Linux
So... to non-technical ppl should I recommend ethical or non-ethical distros?
After all, gnu.org has a "Try parts of GNU" button (It used to be sth like "Not ready to make a switch? Try parts of GNU!", but the website changed a bit since then) - because it's unlikely for any1 to be able to move straight from proprietary os to a 100% free system...
Yes, absolutely! When I first tried installing GNU/Linux it was Red Hat and Mandrake (now Mandriva). When I started using it as a daily driver I was using Ubuntu. I migrated to Trisquel 6 because of the Amazon lens scandal and I've been on Trisquel ever since.
When I help newbies install GNU/Linux for the first time I don't even try to install an FSF-endorsed distro, unless they've very technically confident, or they live near me so I can be available quickly for technical support. I usually start people out on Mint, because I want their first GNU/Linux experience to be better than they're used to on Windows, not a struggle.
Once they are confident using GNU/Linux as a daily driver and understand the basic concepts our communities takes for granted (software freedom, open source development etc), and they're ready to learn more and do more tinkering, then I'll suggest they try Trisquel and point them to these forums. I would never give a Windows or MacOS user a link to the FSF-endorsed distros list and tell them to try one at random, because although that list is a good indicator of the software freedom status of distros, it's a terrible indicator of whether they're any good to use, or even whether the distro is still maintained (note how long it took to remove Musix and BLAG even though they were effectively unmaintained for years).
I am a member!
>I usually start people out on Mint, because I want their first GNU/Linux experience to be better than they're used to on Windows
Mint was not my first GNU/Linux, but what little I remember of it was how it was definitely NOT better than what I was used to on Windows as far as navigation by keyboard was concerned, where 20th century Windowses (and GNU/Linuxes?) shined. Perhaps Mint was the beginning of my descent into ever greater frustration with choices made by designers of (mostly but not only user interfaces for) GNU software, leading me to wonder what was going on in their heads. I still have a bad aftertaste in my own head from several of this week's encounters with usability horrors I had not known. Yet the advantages of GNU in other fields make up for this.
> Perhaps Mint was the beginning of my descent into ever greater frustration with choices made by designers of (mostly but not only user interfaces for) GNU software, leading me to wonder what was going on in their heads.
We've probably all had that experience with certain distros, probably a bit different for each person. For me, my most frustrating distro was RedHat with Gnome 2, and then even worse on Fedora with Gnome 3. And yet I see people on this board who love Gnome 3. For me it feels like someone handed me an iPad with most of my config options stripped away.
Mint never appealed to me. I would try it for a day or two and the CPU would be running hot the entire time whether I was actually doing any computing or not. I liked SuSE and openSUSE for a lot of years, because their help forum was populated by knowledgeable and helpful people. Ubuntu was the worst in that manner, with literally millions of help threads started but never resolved in the forums, and ignorant people handing out horrifyingly bad advice.
When I help newbies install GNU/Linux for the first time I don't even try to install an FSF-endorsed distro, unless they've very technically confident, or they live near me so I can be available quickly for technical support. I usually start people out on Mint, because I want their first GNU/Linux experience to be better than they're used to on Windows, not a struggle.
I would not say that Trisquel's experience is a struggle unless the user is technically-confident. For the past 12 years (or so), my 60+-year-old parents (both accountants) have been using it without much of a problem. They use to complain about Flash not being displayed but that is not a problem anymore: Flash essentially disappeared from Web pages. Beside Web browsing, they use the LibreOffice suite, GnuCash, Shotwell, VLC, Icedove, games (my father loves FreeCol), Wire (in particular to talk with me), etc. The Atlantic ocean separates us but I can connect to their system through SSH. It is however extremely rare that I have to do so. In January, I even upgraded the systems on both of their computers to Trisquel 9 Etiona. Although it was still supposed to be in an alpha state, I have not heard of any issue so far.
All that said, neither my parents nor I have essentially not been using Windows or other GNU/Linux distributions than Trisquel for the same past 12 years. Maybe there have been improvements not present in Trisquel that I am not aware of. If so, what are they?
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