BringMeTheDiscoKing

I one heard ast describe Linux’s code quality as ‘marginal’ (presumably speaking of the kernel)

Of course, it was ast talking at BSDCan but still, harsh words from a master.

As well you should be, sir! :)

HEYO!

Europe didn’t buy the crap sold by ‘economist’ witch doctors like Milton Friedman and Alan Greedspan. At least, they didn’t buy it as much.

The US treats capitalism as a religious absolute. The rest of the world regards the US as a fairly extreme example of laissez-faire capitalism.

Lots of True Believers really thought that if you didn’t regulate anything and just let companies become more and more powerful, somehow the world would be a better place for it.

Check out the Chicago School of Economics if you want to know what really has brought us to this point. Hugely influential and hugely misguided, but it made a lot of men very rich and powerful so it was seen as a good thing 🤦

EDIT: Apologies to Witch Doctors everywhere.

The stock market is perverse.

It is supposed to be a tool that allows people to support promising ventures that they believe in, and allows them to profit from the venture if it is successful.

Instead it’s a race to the bottom, where companies have a feduciary duty to their investors to make them as much profit as possible. This is the ultimate driver of enshittification.

Adam Smith was a smart guy, but he never saw Milton Friedman coming.

Ubuntu, after the third consecutive release that broke previously working hardware. That was a while ago and I haven’t tried it recently, but given snap I’m not really inclined to.

I am happy to help you with your experiment, toxic though it is.

Survey: Upvote if you heard “ba-da-ching!”

Survey: Upvote if you heard “ba-da-ching!”

Survey: Upvote if you heard “sad trombone”

Solid consumer advice

I find when I get frustrated with something on Linux, I go try to do it on Windows. And then I go do it on Linux.

I hear you. I hate Photoshop, glory to Photoshop and all that. You can download a Windows 10 iso for free. Fire it up in Boxes or whatever VM software you have and enjoy unadulterated Photoshop. Sure, you’re running a whole bloated OS and emulating hardware for just one app, but disk space is cheap, and you can disconnect the virtual nic if you don’t want it online.

Linux was kinda sketchy on the hardware I had available so my first experience was installing NetBSD on an '040 Mac with a stack of floppy disks. I was able to get WindowMaker running at 16bits, 640x480. I was pretty slick, with my ‘transparent’ eterm.

Linux doesn’t try to sell my elderly mother a subscription to onedrive

Just 7 decades til world domination!