Specter

Right.

Not taking a stance is actually taking a stance, as in saying “we will comply as soon as we’re asked to.”

Which is fine to do, I just wish people stopped pretending the mainstream distros are resisting doing something that is clearly unpopular, when in reality they already sided with the law. It’s very different from what AntiX did.

I… literally thought you were OP. But anyways I respect your decision. Have a nice day.

Not gonna lie I’m really struggling to sympathize with OP right now. People are trying to drag him out of the doom and gloom and OP just keeps moving the goal posts into a position that nobody can defend.

Frankly, this could be a post complaining about how Macbooks don’t support Windows. Yeah, they don’t, there are multiple options out there though that do, but OP is not interested in them. They want to go back to a time when stores sold hardware that they can no longer sell, and think this post can do it vengeance. Seriously it sounds like a Reddit post. I thought I ran away from there to avoid these types of posts but alas.

The average person. I’m going to repeat that because apparently you missed it. The average person isn’t buying used computers from enterprise resellers.

The average person is most definitely buying second-hand laptops they can afford from Facebook Marketplace or similar, enterprise-grade or not.

It’s not about Linux not being supported. It’s about barrier to entry.

Linux inherently has a barrier of entry by virtue of having essentially zero manufacturers selling hardware that ships with Linux installed. However I don’t understand why you think price is a barrier of entry. If the majority of laptops are priced from 300 euros up to 4000 in some shops, then that’s what customers are willing to pay. I don’t mean now with the AI boom making everything more expensive either, I mean for the past few years this has been the market. Common people buy new from stores, or buy second-hand.

My mother is not buying and installing RAM. My mother would not know what to do if she had driver issues on Linux.

This issue is not specific to Linux. The used market is flooded with Windows laptops that no longer support windows 11 well due to only having 4-8 GB ram. Same with 8GB Macbooks.

I don’t know why you’re pretending that shopping for an older laptop model is only a problem for the average person if you want it to be Linux compatible. Also your grandmother doesn’t have to do anything. She, like the average person, can take her laptop to a repair shop for servicing and upgrading.

This said, you’re not the average person. You already went the extra mile by installing Linux on devices that don’t ship with from factory. Further, you’re specifically interested in small devices when the average person wants bigger screens, you want your device to be underpowered when the average person wants them as powerful as possible in a slim form factor without compromising on battery. Your rant has nothing to do with what the average person wants, your rant is, sorry to say, a completely self-absorved rant that just shows you’re mad your niche preferences aren’t supported by the Linux community, or the world consumer preferences as a whole.

“The sacrifice of staying on Linux after 20 years”

I mean honestly could this title be any more self-absorbed?

I would ask if you’re a Debian user (or use a Debian-derivative), but what even is the point when I already know the answer.

Everything you just said can be fixed by buying Thinkpads. All of them are supported because some companies use Linux at an enterprise level. Until those corporations disappear, Linux will never stop being supported on them. I see a lot of doom and gooom that is frankly unhelpful especially now that the Microslop monopoly is clearly breaking down and there is more potential for Linux than ever before.

Yogas are supported by Linux AFAIK but touchscreens might be a problem.

You post is long but is not very clear, the commenter above is correct. What exactly is your grievance? That Linux does not support your ancient laptop? Or it does not support the laptops (let’s face it, tablets) that YOU want?

Unfortunately resources are scarce in the Linux community, so labor needs to be allocated where most people are (AKA using hardware from the last ~5-10 years, not 30). And Windows surface tablets are extremely locked down.

I’m sorry that you can’t find people who want to continue supporting hardware so old people get nostalgia when they hear its name (eg. Pentium i586). It seems to me you’re not willing to do it either.

Ultimately you’re reducing to hardware a phenomenon that also involves software. Realistically who can run modern computing operations (such as web browsering) on a laptop with 3-4 GB RAM? The answer is nobody. Not comfortably, at least. Browsers take easily 3GB of RAM with just a few tabs open.

As for all laptops being bulky… this is the consumer preference. I don’t like it either but we can barely fault manufacturers for producing what consumers want to buy. I see this trend on phones as well, for me smaller phones are the best thing but the market moved towards bigger screens, heavier phones. And you want underpowered devices? If you could have a slim and lightweight laptop/tablet, wouldn’t you want it to be as powerful as possible? This doesn’t make any sense from a consumer perspective.

Lastly, if you want whatever machine you buy to last longer, then ironically you should learn a thing or two about hardware so that you can replace parts yourself. You don’t have to become a genius, just follow some steps on YouTube on how to change RAM, add SSDs… and yes, Thinkpads especially older ones are great for this since many parts are non-soldered. Apparently this year they are also launching a new one that is way easier to open up and replace parts with their removable keyboard.

Love nixOS (my daily driver) but I wouldn’t call it obscure. It seems to be becoming as popular as Arch for people interested in experimental distros.

Proton and Tita aren’t entirely free either, 500MB is just 1-2 years of emails and after that you’ll start paying if you want to keep your mailbox.

Thank you for the thorough technical explanation, it is clear there are challenges for devs and I understand why the pushback exists now.

As an end user these are things I haven’t felt, are essentially invisible to me so I never felt the need to run away from systemd.

Thanks again.

I’m aware, I just don’t care enough about this particular beef.

Systems works well for me, and in order to get my configuration up to what it is today on NixOS (what I need it to be) I’d have to install multiple proprietary/non-free software/drivers on Guix anyway.

In a roundabout way I’d end up in the same spot.

It’s not really mandatory, but I take your point.

I guess it’s the choice between many minor programs running in tandem, potentially only held together by a few maintainers, or an init system that unifies all those programs under one flag, with multiple maintainers including corporations, but the chance for it to get enshittified.

I personally have no choice of init system since I use NixOS. But I also don’t necessarily think the death of the personal computer will come from an init system, it will sooner come from hardware becoming unavailable/too expensive for individuals to buy (basically what we are seeing happen now).

Okay, other than “I believe it’s against the Unix Philosophy” and “hypothetically it will become bloated”, is there anything else worth knowing?

I should have clarified that the list above only makes sense if you just want your machine to work because atomic distros aren’t great to tinker with (except NixOS), but let’s face it, moist people are not tinkerers do what they need is exactly what atomic distros offer.

I used to be upset about this phenomenon until I realized Social Media is full:

• people who can’t see one palm in front of them
• literal children whose parents are scrolling videos for them to watch.

All due to screen addiction. So while it is tempting to reduce everything to bots, trolls, or mustache-twirling villains who won’t let us have nice things, the reality is we humans too tend to misclick things. 😶‍🌫️

I don’t get it, what about the gitignore reveals he’s vibecoding?

That’s a round about way of saying RTFM, but even less welcoming. Probably not the kind of thing anyone should be told…

Not to mention they look dogshit on GNOME. Fonts look so blue try you’re better off gauging your eyes out, it’s less painful.

Uh… is the NixOS documentation “one of the best around” or have you never checked it? It really can’t be both.

Understand, I’m not trying to criticize NixOS. I use NixOS exclusively and it’s my daily driver. But the documentation really isn’t all there, and it’s not centralized. The best solutions you find across forums, blog posts, random wikis, and by checking other people’s configs like you said.

But yes, the fact you can test things without fear of breaking your system allows you to make hundreds of mistakes stress-free. That’s one of the best features about NixOS.

I am talking from experience here. Some of the documentation is out of date, some is meant for Channel NixOS installs and not so appropriate for Flake-based installs.

Most of the fixes for my issues I find across NixOS discourse forum posts, or in the subreddit of the other platform. The Wiki/official documentation is not enough.

I’m glad you switched to NixOS (welcome!) but this is gap in documentation is something that will become more apparent over time. The NixOS official wiki ironically often links to Arch wiki to explain certain concepts further.