They used to advertise Linux.

You don’t need to mention them by name.

I switched nearly two decades ago after I used a freeware network monitor on Windows and realized that it was making dozens of silent TCP connections online. Some were to Microsoft, while others were to unknown third parties. Just imagine your personal machine doing this!

Linux is actually easy to use these days. Installation is often easier than windows and hardware just works most of the time. Despite that, people have a habit of exaggerating the difficulties in using Linux or BSD. They very often feel like excuses to avoid checking it out.

Unfortunately, this is about as easy as it gets. Practically though, it isn’t going to matter. It sounds like run0 will be a drop-in replacement for sudo. We will know for sure in about 3 days (at the rate at which they assimilate features).

Sudo also blocks almost all environment variables, with the option to set or copy them on demand. I assume that run0 will have similar facilities to propagate variables on demand.

PS: This is my technical understanding. Personally, I don’t like systemd eating up all the other utilities.

Please add a single line of description of the software for those who don’t know. The name gives no clue.

My sincere belief is that the difficulty in self hosting is due to the lack of priority, investment and development, due to the perverse incentives of the SaaS model. I don’t think it’s a technical problem that cannot be resolved with sufficient work. There are PoCs that prove that it can be made as simple as desktops and mobile phones.

That page pitches Nomad as a direct and better competitor to K8s. Both are considered as container orchestration platforms, though nomad can orchestrate other types of jobs as well.

When it comes to scalability, the anecdotes I’ve heard says that Nomad is better. Even the page you provided says the same. (I did try Nomad. But didn’t scale it enough to test this).

The only real issue that I faced with Nomad in comparison to K8s is running certain infrastructure loads like CNI and CSI plugins (like longhorn and mayastor). They don’t just talk to K8s through the standard interfaces (which Nomad also has), they often integrate deep into K8s using operators and CRDs. Nomad doesn’t have the provisions to support such nonstandard deep integrations.

I have to disagree with both those assertions.

If a software is easy to self host, then there is no need to make it harder to deploy as SaaS. The latter will be irrelevant for most people.

And the problem of self hosting isn’t a circular problem as you project it to be. There are architectural changes that can make it positively easier to self host without exposing the sysadmin to needless complexity. The example I quoted before - sandstorm - was a step in this direction. Deploying and administering applications on sandstorm would have been as easy as deploying one on desktop (including cross app integrations). The change needed was to modify the app to work with the sandstorm platform. Unfortunately, the platform didn’t gain the momentum needed to ensure that all available apps would be ported. But it shows that the concept is viable.

In what sense? It’s a competitor by design.

The fundamental problem I see here is the cloud. We were supposed to have easy self hosted applications and data on cheap always-online hardware. Instead, companies promoted cloud services with the intention of rent seeking through subscriptions.

If you look at the software that went from open source to source available, you’ll notice that almost all of them are cloud applications. Why? The companies that created them were hoping to make money through the same subscription model. But then, big cloud players like AWS just outcompeted them using their own software.

Would this have happened if the FOSS ecosystem neglected the cloud hype and gravitated towards self hosting? Perhaps. But not as badly. We still haven’t seen enough progress towards self hosting. It’s still very hard for regular folks. Genuine efforts like sandstorm didn’t find enough momentum. I hope this changes at least now.

Microsoft uses a lot of Linux. Especially on Azure.

Most governments use some sort of enterprise Linux distros, not their own distros. Even when they do, it’s their distros. Why would they worry about censorship and surveillance?

I’m not as optimistic. Some people will complain and move to alternative platforms. But the vast majority won’t care and continue using the abusive platform, forcing the rest to use it sometimes. The best example for this is Reddit and Lemmy.

Personally I’m impressed it took them so long to start driving it to the ground

You mean their copyright washing of FOSS projects using copilot wasn’t enough of a warning?

Yes. Contrary to what some Americans think, the rest of the world isn’t ruled by the US and their often ridiculous laws don’t apply. For instance in this case, neither the code nor the community discussions have anything to do directly with Nintendo. In addition, emulators and reverse engineering are perfectly legal in many places. There are plenty of jurisdictions where such frivolous and preemptive copyright strikes won’t even be tolerated.

Do you think the entire world is under US laws? Besides, with FOSS services, you get the option to backup and migrate the data. Do you get that with Discord?

The same guys who create Chrome have stuffed the web standards with needlessly bloated fluff that makes it nearly impossible for anyone else to implement it. If alternative browsers have to be a thing again, we need a new standard, or at least the current standard with significantly large portions removed.

That’s a very low effort way of underplaying the effect of these communities on the broader FOSS communities. There is a good reason why most FOSS developers/maintainers prefer to keep their personal and unrelated politics away from their project communities. For one, unchecked bigotry in isolated communities can turn bad for the general public - for example, 4chan, kiwifarms, etc. I have heard from more than one source that community engages in hate speech and brigading against people outside the communtiy - one example is visible in this video itself. This is why laws specifying limitation to free speech exists.

Now, even if you neglect the brigading, there is still the problem of support and contribution. Hyprland is a widely used project. Many end users and developers are going to stumble into the discord server either seeking support or with intent to contribute. If they belong to any minority group, they might inadvertently expose themselves to bigotry, bullying and harassment. Now you may be compelled to label this as hyperbole and fearmongering. But this is well known, highly underplayed problem in FOSS communities with numerous examples. There are so many cases where women stopped FOSS contributions because they felt insulted and harassed. This problem is why CoCs exist in the first place.

Nobody can force others to follow CoCs. But as Brodie says, it has become very important for end users to evaluate the projects they use - to see if it is a community they want to ever interact with. Similarly, distros need to decide if they want to expose their users to such a community.

I have seen people describing the code base to be ugly. However, the project itself looks like it will sustain. But don’t go to their discord server for support if you belong to any sort of minority group.