On Corporations and Linux
On Corporations and Linux
I've seen a lot of posts about the Red Hat situation, and it made me want to talk about something I've been thinking about for some time.
Personally, I think Linux is inevitable. It's only getting better, and eventually there will be no real reason to use something like Windows. As a result, there are going to be distros that are going to be heavily dictated or influenced by large corporations, but that's fine. It's very similar to federation. If Microsoft does something shitty with Windows, you don't really have a choice but to deal with it, or to move to a similarly closed competitor. With Linux, that changes. You might have WindowsLinux or something like that, and Microsoft could put in all the insane telemetry, but only people who specifically need what Microsoft would offer will use it. Everyone else can just use the upstreamed code, and/or remove the telemetry - remember, it's open source. The big thing here is how much control any single company can have. For all the FUD that was/is pushed about systemd, what we've actually seen within the Linux ecosystem is that it's robust. Other distros still function perfectly well using systemd alternatives, with minimal if any feature loss. Even if a major part of the Linux system starts going haywire, it's always possible for the community to create an alternative or a fork, without losing the surrounding work.
None of this is the case with a closed source system. That's the beauty of open source. I think people get very scared at the ideas of corporations being involved, but corporations being involved is essentially why Linux is currently as viable as it is for end users. Hell, personally, I stopped using GNOME because of its seemingly user-hostile attitudes. I jumped to KDE which is only getting better, and seeing increasing user numbers for the same reasons I left GNOME. That's a good thing. FOSS gives people the ability to move away from toxic platforms and shitty choices, so I think everyone needs to just take a deep breath and calm down.
We're good.
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While I broadly agree with you, don't discount Windows so easily. It's not finished by any means.
Organizations have a massive investment in Windows and the Windows ecosystem that they cannot or cannot easily replace with Linux. The organizational user base dwarfs the home user base (no stats, just my opinion and experience).
For the technical minded user, Linux makes a lot of sense. For gamers, I still think there is that 'Windows is best' mindset (that is being chipped away at but it's still present - NVIDIA getting on board would help). For small businesses Linux makes sense. For large businesses, cost aside, it doesn't fit for reasons I mentioned above.
Obviously that is a large generalisation, but, again based on experience, I think it holds generally true.
All of this from a home user and gamer who switched to Manjaro in January and has booted his Windows machine twice since then, only to grab files off of.