This year we made good progress. You know, Linux gaming becoming better, Reddit fucking up, Metaverse failing etc. But on the other hand Big Tech has or are planning to make some moves. Such as Windows 12 supposedly being subscription-based, Google's Web Enviroment Integrity API, UK's encryption bill, etc.
So what do you think of the future? I'm currently optimistic. I think the best recent event was Reddit fucking up. Obviously one of the biggest information sources going down that path isn't something to celebrate. But it was bound to happen. I believe decentralized social networks becoming more popular is what Aaron Swartz would have wanted if he saw how Reddit was being managed.
I am seeing it as a net positive. Especially because of the Windows 12 bit, the more Windows is an inconvenience, the more will jump ship, and some will land on linux.
What are some good distros these days to dip my toes in as a gamer who is certainly no pro but knows his way around/isn't afraid of a terminal window?
Ubuntu is a decent place to start.
Before anybody decides to jump down my throat over it, there are some very good reasons to not use Ubuntu generally. I know.
That said, I still recommend it as a first distro because it's
- well supported - if someone puts out Linux support, it's likely been tested on Ubuntu.
- simple to install - everything from WSL to a live boot USB drive to a full install, you've got lots of options
- pragmatic - yes, it's compromised vs being truly FOSS. Otoh, your consumer grade Windows-supported hardware will likely work out of the box. For a first timer, I think that's critical.
There are many other, better distros out there for specific needs. Manjaro is a great one for gaming in particular, but can be a little harder to get setup with, or to find help for when things go wrong. But I still think Ubuntu is the best "starter" distro I've encountered.
I'd just like to say that if something says Ubuntu support it will very likely work on all Debian based distros unless its something really low level and your running one that swapped out systemd or something. They normally just mean that they ship their software as a .deb file and even that can be installed on non Debian distros if your willing to do some special stuff. Also as for drivers/firmware I've never had any issues except when trying to use a distros that doesnt include non-free firmware.
I recommend Nobara - it's based on the rock-solid stable Fedora, with extra tweaks to make gaming easier.
I ended up installing Nobara on one of my drives. I was going to try Garuda but Fedora seemed liked it'd be less hassle dual booting so here we are! Thanks for the rec, you and everyone else!
I've been self hosting on a pi so felt like a good time to get back into a Linux desktop environment.
Not the best solution but right now I am using Geforce now. Not gaming on linux but I am gaming while on linux. Didn't need to touch my windows partition for the past 3 months.
The core is the surveillance advertising, to create incommings with profiling and tracking user data, practiced by practically all large US companies. This is the underlying evil that must be eradicated, not only by putting the user's privacy in question, degrading him to simple raw material and merchandise, but also security by filtering sensitive data, such as medical and banking. This requires a deep review to eliminate it as a means of income for companies. With this, an important step towards a free internet is already achieved.
It is essential to educate users to ALWAYS read the TOS and PP of a software or service before using it, avoiding those who obviously share user data with third parties and looking for alternative products, which there surely are. It is the company's ethics regarding the user that is most important today. If there are more and more users who set these criteria, these companies will have to change or they will run out of users.
eg Google has excellent products that, from a technical aspect, are impeccable and many of them without a real alternative, it is their ethics regarding the user, which makes them unacceptable, this is the point and trying to tell people that, yes, the product is Good, but the price is your sovereignty, look for another one, perhaps not as complete, but it serves you the same and does not turn you into a simple product.
It is the user who determines the market, but only if they learn not to fall into the trap of big companies with products that shine so beautifully. It is the user who must determine what he needs, not the company.
Reading TOS and Privacy Policies are a useless endeavor. They aren’t written to empower consumers or inform them abou their meaningful choices, they’re written to disclaim the maximum amount of liability. That said, I agree with everything else you said. Data brokers, surveillance advertising, and the lack of any meaningful regulations are what got us into this mess - but all those wrongs can be righted. California just passed a law to let you delete your information from every registered data broker, forever. When given the choice consumers universally opt out of surveillance advertising. And though they’re aligning on opt out frameworks, more and more states are paying comprehensive consumer privacy laws. There’s some reason to be optimistic - but as someone in those trenches… not THAT optimistic.
No, at least in the EU, what is stated in the TOS and PP must be true by law. If companies pass data to third parties, without specifying it in these legal documents, they may face million-dollar fines and even closure. The same as in all legal documents. As much as everyone at the beginning says that they greatly respect user privacy, or similar, they must say in the rest of the text if they pass data to third parties when they do so. Therefore TOS and PP are reliable documents, and even give the user a legal document of proof, if the company does not comply with these conditions. After all, it is a contract between the company and the user who signs it, if they create an account. But this should bother you to read it, as it surely would also in other contracts.
Google didn't back off. They're going forward with it, but in smaller pieces. Their first piece is going after streamed and stored media, instead of the web as a whole.
How do you control a population? You take away their rights, one little piece at a time, so they don't notice the change. Same concept as how you eat an elephant: one bite at a time.
This time next year, the internet will be unrecognizable and massively corporate (more so than it is now), unless we, the internet population, fight back and win.
we will lose until big tech gets broken
money begets money is the cancer of the world
I think decentralization is the key, but not necessarily these new fangled takes like the fediverse which have their own problems.
Just everyone build a damn site for yourself and if I want to know what Jeff Poff is up to I can go to jeffpoff.com and otherwise set up an rss feed for everyone I wanna keep up with. Community sites can cover needs for communities but otherwise why tf do I need Facebook for you to show me you went on vacation last month?
Privacy is unironcally getting better, it's only bad because of the vulnerability in our current web design we're hardening against. Https and hello encrypt go a long way to hide our traffic, definitely not anonymous though. E2ee has never been as prevalent as it is now.
Corporations spying are obviously bad, but if it's possible, then it's inevitable that it was going to happen regardless and it's a good thing we're hardening our protocols against what was fundamentally a design flaw that would inevitably be exploited eventually.
Decentralization has never been nearly as popular or robust as it is now. I spend 90% of my social media on decentralized apps, which I could never say that before. My phone is as private as it has ever been with GrapheneOS.
Laws are getting more robust for privacy, some of the time anyways. Fascist laws in the name of "think of the children!" are trying to break encryption and privacy and are constantly a battlefield we need to be extremely vigilant over.
Devil's advocate:
Have you guys ever considered that the information these companies are making off of you just isn't that valuable? Your phone number, email, house address, skin color, sexuality, height, gender, fashion, job, and friends are not secrets. Anybody can know these things about you. We're on the Internet and web-based companies want to interact with people, if you don't like that go to a different website. But you'll never have a privacy agnostic internet experience because PEOPLE KNOW THINGS ABOUT EACHOTHER. That's one of the things about being people.
I remember reading somewhere (years ago, too lazy to find a source) that Google might take in $30/year off of a single Google user. That's absolutely pennies, that's not worth anything. Google only works because of their scale, and I bet a tiny drop in user activity of like 10% would destroy them. Most tech companies are just trying to make up more things to base promises on for their investors, those companies have no real value, they're all basically theoretical. So who cares? Just use them while you need it and if they fizzle out then all the data they had on us is worthless if not gone and the opensource community will step up like it always does.
I'm feeling positive, too. You can't undo the progres made in the decentralized network space. Every loss for big tech is a win for us. I don't hold much hope that decentralized networks are going to sweep the globe and return the internet to it's former glory. But I do think we'll always have a space, and that space can only get bigger.
