More on how to preserve our (online) security and privacy, nay freedom even, would be more than a bit off topic here but if there's any interest I can always post in the appropriate forum. (And BTW, many if not most free software developers earn very nicely out of it in one way or another.) Free software is, in that proper sense of open source and free to audit, modify, and use in any way you like, one of the greatest assets that Linux has.

and associated software (see China already!), truly free, open source software, is one of the few things that can help us to avoid a totalitarian future. This in fact, given the situation today where we are facing ever increasing and soon total surveillance and total invasion of our privacy both online, on telecoms, with 'Smart TVs' and the likes of Alexa and general IoT, and in the world around us i.e CCTV etc.

Free software simply means that the source should be freely available, and that anyone and everyone should be free to modify the programme as they wish and free to distribute this. (He had set out to provide just that with Ubuntu and the - quite excellent - 'Unity' desktop, now replaced by Gnome 3 modified to mimic Unity.Īs for free software, this does not by any means necessarily mean free of cost. Linus Torvalds himself stated about a year or two ago that he was disappointed that there are so many divergent distros, while Mark Shuttleworth (Canonical/Father of Ubuntu) around about the same time voiced his disappointment that there wasn't one unitary Desktop Environment etc. And another is too many different Desktop Environments/Window managers/etc. And yes, one of the problems with Linux is, far too many different distros.

I totally agree that the 'Rotten Fruit' is every bit as bad as MS in every way, no question about that. Linux is a fragmented mess.Īll those common 'software should be free' expectations don't exactly help it either. Why oh why aren't we all using Linux yet instead of Windblows or macOS!?Īpple isn't any better than Microsoft, and to understand why we aren't using Linux yet despite how badly we have been treated by Microsoft, all you need to do is watch Linus Tech Tips series on that subject on Youtube.

Winstep xtreme 20.10 full version