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̛If you check the surroundings, you will see the mess we are in. Virtually (?) there are 0 options for a viable IoT platform, mobile/desktop OS that doesn't ann

• lima 3y ago
  Linux desktop is more viable than ever. Zigbee/Matter/... are widely adopted open standards without vendor lock in. Things like Home Assistant are getting serious attention and funding. Could be much worse.
  • hkt 3y ago
    I can confirm: I've been using Linux on the desktop since I was 15, nearly 20 years ago now. Be not afraid, fellow nerds!
    • leansensei 3y ago
      Since 1997 here -- still my OS of choice, for desktops, laptops, and servers. I enjoy FreeBSD and NetBSD too, but Debian feels like "home". No surprises, no gotchas, no telemetry, no nonsense. Every time I have to use my Windows 10 corporate laptop, I become even more bewildered that people actually tolerate such a farce as their daily computing environment.
      • omgmajk 3y ago
        You and I are quite alike it seems, Linux always on some device, server, laptop since 1997 - Debian is home. I do tolerate Windows to some extent however, it doesn't bother me too much. But that might be the gaming nerd inside talking.
        • NegativeK 3y ago
          Fellow Debianer that visits Windows. It's fine when I'm derping around in Photoshop or something, but it's infuriating for actual work. Debian is home.
          • seabass-labrax 3y ago
            Are you aware of Photopea? It's FOSS and a very capable alternative to Photoshop. It evens runs smoothly on my old Android 5 tablet. https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/
            • NegativeK 3y ago
              I've tried a few of the FLOSS photography tools. I'm impressed with them, but I prefer the Adobe suite for how I work. There's also a few other tools like Fusion 360, games, etc. that I prefer having Windows around for.
              • seabass-labrax 3y ago
                I used to keep a Windows installation to hand on a disk, but after I realised that I hadn't booted into it for over two years I started using FLOSS operating systems exclusively. Re. photography, do any specific features of Photoshop come to mind that you miss in free alternatives?
            • omgmajk 3y ago
              I am very averse to online only tools. I don't really like using them in the browser at all. I don't get this trend. If I do graphics I mainly use Gimp or InkScape but I don't do any of that very often. Mostly I just code or game.
        • vladislavv 3y ago
          With steam and proton why bother?
          • 3y ago
  • pawelmurias 3y ago
    > Linux desktop is more viable than ever. Other then in most stuff migrating to the browser how so? Browser + terminal has been a good combo for a long time, the desktop enviornment only have suffered enshittification due to a push to touch screen oriented UI conventions.
    • niam 3y ago
      Are you using that word because it has the funny swear part in it, or because that's how you believe other people have been using it?
    • jeltz 3y ago
      PipeWire made sound finally work flawlessly for me on Linux, Proton made it possible to play a ton of games, graphics drivers being stable, especially for Vulcan and Firefox enabling hardware acceleration. Some things are worse as you note, but there have been som important improvements.
      • oblio 3y ago
        Is there a mainstream laptop on which Linux runs as well as Windows? I'd really want one that doesn't cost 3k+.
        • MaKey 3y ago
          The Linux support for ThinkPads is pretty good I think. I've been using a T14 AMD Gen 1 for three years now with Ubuntu. The hardware is supported by the LVFS too. I'm upgrading to a T14 AMD Gen 4 shortly and will be running Linux (Ubuntu) again.
        • erwincoumans 3y ago
          ASUS - ROG Zephyrus M16 16" 240Hz Gaming Laptop runs Ubuntu 22.04 very well in my opinion: CUDA, Vulkan, Wifi, bluetooth, sleep etc. I installed Linux on a second SSD next to Windows on the original SSD. The version with NVIDIA RTX 4070 costs 1700 USD at Best Buy (the one with RTX 4090 may exceed your budget)
  • Pannoniae 3y ago
    The Linux desktop is better than ever (in fact, I am switching to it the first time in a few days! I just need to setup some things first) Sadly, the enshittification has also taken over parts of the Linux desktop as well though. For example, the mobile-first, flat-everything user-hostile design. (like gnome) Dark themes were not common while skeuomorphism was mainstream, they are only in demand right now because viewing an extremely low-contrast white flat theme is an eyesore. Luckily, KDE and the similar still exists and you can theme it:)
    • jraph 3y ago
      I don't like Gnome so much, but enshittification is quite a strong word to qualify it. I'd prefer we reserved this word for when stuff gets worse because of money / investors, with incentives at odds with the user needs. I don't believe Gnome suffers from decisions that are bad because of financial incentives.
      • Pannoniae 3y ago
        Well, I am open to changing my mind. What do you think, what's the reason then? From an outsider perspective, 10 years ago I've seen all those beautiful, perfectly usable UIs, and they have almost all disappeared by today. What happened? Why do you think GNOME does that?
        • jraph 3y ago
          I believe its maintainers truly believe they are taking the right decisions that are good for the project. They limit the feature set so they can stabilize on a smaller basis. They take UI/UX decisions they think are right. That's what I think. I also think they managed to build a beautiful UI that works quite well and that pleases many people. I also think they removed useful features, lagged on important features (thumbnails in the file picker, which I always found bad anyway, including in the Gnome 2 days). I also think they believe they know better than their users on what they need when they really don't, that they should be more understanding of users trying to work around the flaws instead of despising them, and that they shouldn't both reduce the feature set to a minimum and break extensions in each release. And I do indeed think they made UI like it would be used on tablets, degrading the experience desktop, way too early when they didn't work well on tablet anyway for many reasons and KDE was the only bearable option on tablets at the time. So I really believe they truly do what they think is best, but I also like the KDE approach way better: listening to the users, trying to polish things while not removing too many features, being humble in their decision, and acknowledging their users might have different needs / taste. (for instance, in Plasma 6, they are reverting to double click by default - many KDE devs prefer simple click and think it's objectively better, but they recognize many users are disturbed by this default.)
  • b800h 3y ago
    "You mean GNU/Linux." :-)
    • lima 3y ago
      Indeed, though Android/Linux, ChromeOS/Linux and others are doing fine also!
• fragmede 3y ago
  I just want an IoT plug so I can switch things off and on. It should expose a tcp port and allow me to send packets to it via wifi with some level of authentication. I don't want any cloud shit with it. Just a simple (okay, it's not actually that simple) device that connects to wifi and lets me throw packets at it to control it. Without GNU, that's just a fever dream. Many cancers are survivable these days. I hope he has one of those.
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  • sschueller 3y ago
    All the tools exist to build your own. For example with a esp32-s3 and a custom pcb at one of the low priced fab houses in China. Sure you have to do it yourself. The primary reason off the shelve products are cloud etc. is because these companies spent the time and money to do the above and since no on wants to pay 100+ for an iot switch they add cloud garbage etc. These products are now sold to the masses and if you have to support them you need control over them or your costs go through the roof. I am working on a hardware iot product (no cloud) and I have to tape off the USB service port not because there is anything that could go wrong but because people don't read instructions and think the thing will power over USB when there is a power supply included with a barrel plug...
    • Jenda_ 3y ago
      > For example with a esp32-s3 and a custom pcb at one of the low priced fab houses in China. Sure you have to do it yourself. Interestingly, even after years of professional hardware engineering, I still feel some hesitation when interfacing with 230V AC.
  • luma 3y ago
    Check out the Sonoff S31: https://sonoff.tech/product/smart-plugs/s31-s31lite/ https://sonoff.tech/product/smart-plugs/s31-s31lite/ You get an ESP8266 micro with wifi plus a power supply, relay, momentary button, current and voltage sense, and a couple LEDs all for about $8. Serial debug and flash headers are broken out for easy access on the PCB. They ship with chinese firmware but the headers and standard hardware make them dead simple to flash with your own firmware, or ESPhome or Tasmota if you prefer.
• 0xpgm 3y ago
  Yet many software developers have personally benefited a lot from FOSS and are aware of the principles behind it. But when someone is willing to pay us a lot of money, many of us will willingly become deaf to the free software ideals and submit to the corporations in exchange for stable employment.
  • palata 3y ago
    > many of us will willingly become deaf to the free software ideals Genuine question: what proportion of developers actually understand the free software ideals? Have you ever tried to go to your colleagues and ask what [choose your open source license] implies? My experience is that most people think that GPL means that you need to publicly distribute all the code and that BSD means that you can just use it without any attribution.
• alerighi 3y ago
  Well Linux is usable as a desktop operating system. For IoT there are multiple open source project, Home Assistant, ESP Home, just to name a few. The real problem are mobile operating system. Android phones are nowadays even more and more locked down, and using ROMs without Google Services is nearly impossible.
  • maheart 3y ago
    >The real problem are mobile operating system There's SailfishOS. It still uses Android kernel+drivers, but above that it's a "real" GNU/Linux system (glibc, systemd, bash, Qt, connman+ofono, zypp/packagekit, Gecko). It's not completely FOSS, but it is usable as a daily driver, and has been for at least 10 years (based on personal experience).
  • denton-scratch 3y ago
    > The real problem are mobile operating system. I think it's deeper than that; I think the problem is mobile devices. The OS has to somehow paper-over the fact that there's no mouse, and that everything has to be done with finger-stabs on a 3"x5" screen. That doesn't work with the traditional desktop widgets, so a variety of OS-level widgets and Javascripty plugins is layered on top. But (a) they're not consistent with one-another, and (b) they're not consistent with the desktop metaphor (which isn't going to go away). Basically, I don't think a phone is suitable for user-input of any complexity. It's a device for selecting content that you then consume passively. It can't be used as a replacement for a desktop. "Mobile first" sounds all very well, but nearly all mobile-first projects have the desktop portion permanently stubbed.
    • Jenda_ 3y ago
      > I think it's deeper than that; I think the problem is mobile devices. I think it's deeper than that; I think the problem is app ecosystem. More and more apps that you need to use (e.g. the only way to perform 2FA with your bank) are dependent on Google/Apple services, use anti-root, anti-tampering and remote attestation techniques, making them impossible to run on free (libre) mobile OS alternatives.
  • 3y ago