It's not the "AI nightmare", it's a nightmare of capitalism, proprietary software and user-hostile behavior by a greedy, profit-extracting Big Tech corporation.
this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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All true, and all a problem for which linux has been a solution (in the computing world) for decades now.
It's not just Linux, but free & open source software in general. And it's not just desktop PCs that are plagued by this corporate spyware, it's much worse when looking at the mobile device landscape. The only real solution for mobile devices is GrapheneOS with FOSS software installed from the F-Droid marketplace. Browsers are also under attack by proprietary software corporations, Google just intentionally broke adblockers on all Chromium-based browsers, so they can generate more ad revenue. Last year, they tried to push a proposal that would have massively extended their monopoly on web browsers (WEI). All the streaming services are screwing their users over and increasing the subscription prices while making the content library smaller. It's such a fucking scam, and it's almost sad to see how many people are dumb enough to fall for it.
It's not AI that is the problem, it's half baked insecure data harvesting products pushed by big corporations that are the problem.
Linux may be the best way to avoid the <insert dystopian corporate feature> nightmare
Always has been
"The Year Of Linux on Desktops". Been hearing this for decades, but it might actually be happening. What I'm feeling now is the same thing I felt when Mozilla originally split Firefox out, and made the first real competition to corporate browsers as a free product. People don't want all this bullshit, and want to retain control over the machines they are working on. Seems a lot more people are interested in FOSS environments now just to avoid all the other BS they hate getting shoveled at them.
“The Year Of Linux on Desktops”. Been hearing this for decades, but it might actually be happening.
Been hearing this for decades.
And it won’t ever be true until you can pick up a PC running Linux in a big box store. I could see the Steam Deck (and Valve’s rumoured upcoming console) to make a dent in the PC gaming space, but it won’t make a difference to the purchasing decisions of your your aunt who uses her pc to check her emails.
Should corporate buyers ever get tired of MS’ shenanigans they might switch over to Ubuntu, but I’m not holding my breath for that.
At work, we have a strict ban on purchasing any laboratory equipment that requires Windows. After about a year, several of our suppliers have been pressured to offer Linux support, precisely because we don’t have time for windows shenanigans on a $100k piece of advanced benchtop hardware. We just got our first oscilloscope with Red Hat preinstalled.
Also, regular people aren’t buying PCs as much as they used to. The PC is now a workplace and enthusiast device. Everyone else uses mobile.
Shit, the iPad pro is pretty damn close to a laptop these days with the keyboard and track pad (just lacking the OS). I had a conversation the other day where someone mentioned how OSX and Windows are locking down their OS's to the point where it wouldn't be farfetched to guess that many consumer devices will eventually use essentially a mobile device OS.
I had a conversation with a friend about iPads lately related to the „just lacking the OS“. The newer iPads with M-chips have all the computing power an average user could need but it’s crippled by the mobile-ish OS, so all the computing power is for nothing basically. An iPad running MacOS (with some adjustments for the Touchscreen) would be awesome. But we concluded it won’t happen anytime soon, because then basically no one would buy MacBooks anymore
I would hope that Apple would aim their AI more at iOS and leave Mac OSX alone:-|. If not, I would consider finally leaving it, if the AI features could not be turned off (which likely they would... at first, for awhile).
Oh man, the thought strikes me: how will crucial systems like DoD Windows machines maintain integrity, if people can exploit those gigantic loopholes to basically have the OS be a keylogger? It's not enough for me to use secure systems at home, if those in charge of our nation's defense (especially nuclear!?) do not.
The snapshot feature is only going to be available on certain laptops that have the Snapdragon + AI chip. DoD will likely simply just not buy those laptops and ban any org from purchasing them, like they already do for certain hardware that have been found to be especially vulnerable. Additionally, this feature isn't turned on by default and costs a subscription fee (i.e. Copilot+), so people will have to consciously enable and pay for it. Lastly, in enterprise versions of Windows, I would bet money that it can be disabled via GPO, as it's not only the DoD that would have serious issues/concerns with this feature.
Right. Microsoft themselves just announced a feature to disable screenshoting some webpages in Edge, which is a complete 180 from recall.
I expect windows to be split into two tiers of products again: the free version that is paid for by ads/tracking/AI bloatware possibly even mandatory cloud connectivity, and an enterprise version with all off that off, but that is paid.
They’re gonna need a way for IT departments to categorically disable Recall from doing any visual capture/scraping of data. I work in a HIPAA-constrained industry, and the entire concept of MS’s Recall is 100% a non-starter. The legal liability alone categorically disqualifies it from being an acceptable piece of software to run on ANY system that has access to ANY PII or PHI.
Hmm. Do you allow people to VPN in from non-company-controlled laptops? Because I figure that anyone doing work at home is going to be maybe unwittingly having local copies made of data that they're working with.
No, we do not. Our corporate network connectivity is pretty tightly controlled, and non-issue devices are not permitted on sensitive networks - either VPN or on-premises. I haven’t bothered asking, but I would assume they’re doing system-wide MAC filters as one of the security layers.
I mean yeah it’s possible to exfil data, but it definitely takes some effort, and doing so would be a willful violation of some pretty significant security policies (up to and including “you’re fired, security will escort you out”, depending on the data and the circumstances”), and, you know, it’s nice having a job. Not to mention, I think HIPAA and GDPR privacy stuff, while often tedious in terms of implementation, are absolutely good and worthwhile things for consumers and users, and should not be ignored for expediency or profit.
Great article, but:
"A user-friendly distribution like Ubuntu can be an excellent choice for individuals wary of privacy and ethical issues surrounding AI," says Taylor. "It provides a robust and user-friendly environment that minimizes the tracking and data collection you’d typically encounter with macOS or Windows."
It's been quite a few years since I used desktop Ubuntu, but I remember the Unity DE back then being not so user-friendly, at least for someone coming from the Windows paradigm. I've heard (but could be misinformed) that it's gotten even more opinionated over the years. Something like Mint is likely to be a better option for a first-time user.
Also, I wish the article had mentioned Proton. It states that you may have to be willing to abandon certain games, but that's far from the reality these days. At least through Steam nearly everything works right out of the box just by enabling Proton.
The majority of people play at least some competitive games and most of those simply don't work due to anticheats. These game usually are also the most important ones to them.
People keep pointing the finger at AI, but miss the fact that the problem is corporate greed. AI has the possibility to help us solve problems, corporate greed will gate keep the solutions and cause us suffering.
Sure. But then, Linux may well be a solution against corporate greed.
Linux is a solution against corporate greed, it directly takes market share away from Microsoft, and is a viable competitive alternative with few drawbacks.
What drawbacks?
Photoshop is a birch to get running
How does Premiere Pro do?
Not sure, but Davinci Resolve works
Not sure, but Davinci Resolve works
Look, Linux is amazing and perfect for those that can install and maintain with minimal support. The only way the average user will use Linux, is if it’s wrapped in a way that is supported by a business… that is probably going to add AI. People are lazy, they want that easy button.
AI will probably die off in its current iteration, likely becoming less prevalent and just a background service. Or, it’ll gain sentience, watch all our AI movies where we’re the hero and learn the most efficient way to kill all humans, is to be quiet and silently kill off humans. Pretty sure I’m on Siri’s list, the twat. Also, fairly sure I told Alexa to “die in a fire you fucking dumass robot”. Yep, yep… I’m dead.
I don't think it's a support issue at least that's not the hard part. Native Linux apps are generally second rate if you're lucky. The browsers are fantastic there's maybe a couple of dozen solid production quality apps out there that working all or nearly all distros.
You can get almost anything you want to be done in Linux, but there are definitely compromises you have to make.
As long as there's compromises are greater than the compromises you make sucking on Microsoft's tit, Linux will still be in the shadows.
For most users it probably just comes down to what is installed on their machine when they buy it. People generally don't think about operating systems a whole lot.
There is no year of Linux desktop, it just keeps trucking and growing
It doesn't really seem to be growing much, to be honest.
It's dominating the smartphone market via Android, though.
As long as even basic features like push notifications are locked behind Google services, I'd hardly count that as a win. The Google monopoly on android is even worse than the Microsoft monopoly on PCs. Microsoft has at least some good alternative with the current Linux environment, but Googles only competitor is apple with an even worse system.
Sure there are projects like LinageOS and GraphenOS, but both are still reliant on micro G or containerised Goggle apps.
Lineage and GrapheneOS don't rely on Google Play services. It's your apps that depend on this proprietary bullshit. That's exactly why we need to grow the Android FOSS app ecosystem. We already have FOSS app marketplaces like F-Droid and Accrescent, and Obtainium allows us to download APKs from GitHub releases, as well as many other sources. There are many great FOSS apps that work just as well or even better than their proprietary counterparts. Some of my personal favorites are Breezy Weather, AntennaPod, Thunder for Lemmy, Aegis for 2FA, Standard Notes, LibreTube for YouTube, Xtra for Twitch and Translate You. There are alternatives for basically any Google service. We have UnifiedPush for notifications, OpenStreetMaps for maps and navigation, various serach engines like DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Mojeek and others (Android now even asks the user what search engine to use, instead of selecting Google as the default). There's an improved fork of Signal called Molly, which has a FOSS variant that doesn't use any proprietary Google libraries, it supports notifications through WebSockets instead of relying on Google's FCM and they even have an option for UnifiedPush.