Time for cleaning house. For major backups. Upheavals happening everywhere. The price of coffee is skyrocketing. This hurts Swedes more than many. Swedes don't drink more cups of coffee but they consume more - most in the world. They're the aficionados of coffee. Along with the Belgians where 'a cup of coffee' can turn into a complete meal. And ceremony.
People are still stunned by this vaccination mania, when it's been known for over a year that Covid's not something you want to treat with a vaccine anyway. And the result? Infections skyrocket. More people are getting Covid since the vaccination campaigns began.
Except in Uttar Pradesh of course.
But you can't stop Big Pharma. Or Rochelle. Or Anthony.
Then there's the software side. Microsoft and Apple both came out with OS updates. Windows 11 (catchy name) and Monterey (apologies to John and Elaine Steinbeck). Is there anything in either of those updates that's worth looking into? No. Go open source. Do it now. Skip 'Go'. Just get there. The road may be a bit rocky, but you'll be glad you made it.
Are there drawbacks with open source? Of course.
Linus refuses to discuss, much less consider, even less adopt and implement, microkernel. What's 'microkernel'? It's a safety strategy. Based on the painful awareness that crashes - kernel panics - occur when you're in the kernel. Kernel code must be very precise. If you've ever seen the actual source code of a driver writer, you'll understand.
There are no fallbacks in kernel mode. You fuck up, everyone suffers. No mistakes are allowed. None.
Kernel code is hard to write. Driver writers usually work with two computers, not one. The second box watches what the first one does. Driver writers are picky-picky to a fault. No mistakes allowed.
And therefore it stands to reason that the less time you spend in kernel mode the better. That's the reasoning behind microkernel. As once considered in Redmond, as used in both Redwood City and Cupertino. No crashes.
Now why Linus refuses to even discuss it? Ask him.
The Linux GUIs suck massive hippo genitals. They're ghastly. They're designed on the assumption that all good GUIs have to look and behave like Microsoft's. Just think how ridiculous that sounds. The designers of the Linux GUIs have never seen anything but the Windows GUI. They ask stupid questions like 'why is the menu not on the application window'. They have NFC what's going on under the bonnet. They cannot conceive of one 'icon' opening two dozen files - shouldn't there be two dozen icons instead? They cannot conceive of saving all open files with a single click. Or closing all open documents with a single click. Those GUI designers weren't high on experience when they sat down at the drawing boards. And you as a user suffer as a result. And no, there's no excuse.
Now let's look to the bright side. What's good about open source? Barring what's mentioned above: everything. The code's in the open. You can take the source and build your own OS yourself. You can add things to it, take things out of it. You can make it your own. If you think your own code is good enough, you can submit it, and maybe they'll take it into consideration and your name will be in lights.
But it goes beyond that. For in today's intrusive totalitarian surveillance society, complete immunity from those bastards is paramount. Get this: Their techology is so good today that they can register your fingerprints if you so much as flash a hand at a camera - in a photo or even a video clip. They're already reading licence plate numbers, the magazines on your coffee table, the spines of the books on your shelf...
See this?
https://rixstep.com/1/20210103,00.shtml
See this?
https://rixstep.com/2/1/20210403,00.shtml
Immediately above is what happens when you take a brand spanking new Apple laptop from Planet Groovy, take all possible precautions - and there are many - and then connect.
Battalions of stealth processes trying to phone home to Apple. And they told you that they care about your privacy.
You go open source not because of the obvious shortcomings, but despite them. Because you no longer have an option.
Where are we?
We're right in between. Battle-scarred but surviving. Some went into orbit, some returned from outer space. To the extent we can, we'll try to influence and contribute to open source, but we'll also keep our proprietary stuff going. We have friends and associates still stuck on those platforms for one reason or another. We'll keep trying to offer support.
The XPT might come out from under the dust covers, probably after the first of the year. It'll probably be a big project. To see how bad Windows has become, see if anything is actually better, and move it all to 64-bit. Finding volunteers might be difficult, but vetting them is even worse.
Things are the same on the ACP side. There might be hardware purchases there as well. But holding onto legacy hardware is more paramount than ever.
You have no friends in either Redmond or Cupertino.
No one's claiming a move to FOSS is easy. Only that it's necessary.