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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Lemmy will need ads to support individual servers, eventually, when they’re not attached to another org (like a server CNN would run for just outgoing news dissemination). The rest of them, with bills and needing to eat, may need to go to ads.

    I support proper ads that do not get priority placement and aren’t in-your-face.

    I support prioritization of profile migration so we can vote with our feet if a particular server’s ad volume and content offends our sensibilities.

    But I’m just saying I fully expect some ads are gonna happen, and I hope we can prevent full enshittification when that happens.













  • These are facts you will not like.

    • for a number of years I worked with a group producing and maintaining the AT&T Unix primary distribution.
    • the people in the organization worked on the Unix kernel, deeply cloistered and talented.
    • these people, one of them easily the smartest I’ve ever known, unilaterally used windows.

    Let’s look at that, though, as we move from fact to memories and opinions. What I recall is the standard dev kit at the time was VanDyk SSH. That’s all they needed, but they used Mozilla as their mail and web client. They also needed a music player because of course – even if that was extra.

    Windows provided all of those, and WinAMP, and it did two things reliably that Unix at the time didn’t: it booted well and it ran music smoothly. It provided a voice-chat client and ran that smoothly as well. The various chat apps of the time, which were probably three but felt like a dozen, also ran well.

    In short, the crappy windows default platform didn’t ask for tweaking and gave the user an SSH client on demand. When highly-paid people don’t need to futz with modelines, the company doesn’t lose money it didn’t need to.

    I tell you that to tell you this. Linux has grown up from the modeline days, but no distro is free of bizarre junk shoved in by some wunderkinder with more power than reviewers and pushed by a vendor hoping to create the next big thing – without stopping to ask whether it should, whether it’s useful for us. Machines boot a little more slowly and a little less reliably, and there is a non-zero risk that a very valuable dev’s machine will NOT be available when required. Windows has jammed their own shit into the OS - just privacy risk after ad spooge, on and on - but the thing it does well (when it’s not patching) is boot well and allow us to start Putty and WinAMP and Seamonkey.

    And I’m not sure whether a reliable start into something with a bunch of ad spooge is better or not.

    I SHOULD MENTION that I’m moving my geriatric mom, and others, to linux later this year. She’s ready, even if I don’t relish supporting her from 9 hours’ travel away.

    And I love how the gif included was correct and almost perfect English, but every time it’s quoted there’s a different writing error.