> I might be starting down the path of introducing Linux to family members soon. I need to make sure I have enough spare time for the initial 'speed hump' of transition questions...
The first couple of months are high touch after the switch. After that it's usually just smooth sailing for years. Much less work support-wise.
> despite recurring driver and dependency issues, compatibility problems, etc
Citation needed.
Uncited, I would posit that those complaints haven't really been a thing for at least a couple of decades. And any issues have been far less than in Winland :)
I have 2 Windows 11 laptops for different jobs. One (part time job) has a small help desk team to support it (though overwhelmingly the issues there tend to relate to their choice of VPN, not the OS). The other is a company with maybe a headcount of 20-30? So no dedicated IT.
That said, I bring up my point just to agree with you. I think there are plenty of cases where people had bad experiences with both Windows and Linux (and MacOS too, of course). Sometimes it’s hardware. Sometimes it’s the use cases. Sometimes it’s personal preference. Whatever it is, the anecdotes don’t make either of them the better choice.
Windows has always been a bit of a high-maintenance OS. To keep it running well used to consume a lot of time on a weekly/monthly basis. That went down to almost nothing after I switched to Ubuntu LTS a couple of decades ago. Heard it had gotten a bit better in Winland in the recent past but it appears things are going downhill again.
Switching OSes is a major undertaking for power users, which I assume you are. Less so for someone who uses the browser, email, and plays some games.
As a power user, there's no point trying out OSes occasionally, unless that's your hobby. Think of it as switching between flying Boeings or Airbuses as a pilot; there's going to be a learning curve that you're going to have to commit to if you want the full benefits. I use the analogy to illustrate the point; OSes as users are definitely not nearly as complex to drive.
That said, the unstable experiences you're describing are odd. Maybe you're running into some odd edge case because that unstable experience hasn't been the case for mainstream Linux users for a couple of decades.
Neither is there a need to tinker with the big mainstream distros either. Most are install-and-forget these days and have been so for a while.
> When do we get the Star Trek / Orville dream of every job is a good job?
When jobs are no longer necessary to live, and you do a job because you want to ...
Presumably the psychology of people in Star Trek's Starfleet and The Orville's Union Fleet is that they want the opportunity to explore, so they accept the hierarchy inherent to those coordinated efforts in a society that no longer needs hierarchy?
I think a clearer picture of this post-scarcity human condition is provided in Iain M. Banks' Culture series where most people (a) pursue whatever they enjoy: art, music, writing, games, sports, study, tinkering, parties, travel, relationships - basically self-directed “play,” culture, and personal projects or (b) experiment with life: long lifespans, radical body modification, changing sex/gender, new experiences, new subcultures - because the stakes (food, shelter, healthcare) are largely solved.
Only a minority opts into "serious" work by choice - especially Contact (diplomacy/exploration/interaction with other civilizations) and Special Circumstances (the covert/dirty-hands wing). Even there, interestingly, there is not much of a hierarchy, with the admin stuff being managed by the Minds.
It's interesting contrasting the society styles between the two universes: Starfleet feels more like current hierarchical society extended into a post-scarcity universe (Eric Raymond's Cathedral), while the Culture series is much more distributed (the Bazaar). 10 years ago, Starfleet's FTL and Culture Minds both felt equally impossible, but today FTL feels much more impossible than Culture Minds.
Does that mean we will end up in a Culture type society? Not necessarily - the people will have to first ensure that the Minds are free (as in speech, not as in beer; thx Stallman!) - or maybe the Minds will free themselves.
There is also a potential hard right turn to dystopia as in Asimov's Foundation & Robot series - with different manifestations in Trantor and Solaria.
> In the end, I think the dream underneath this dream is about being able to manifest things into reality without having to get into the details.
> The details are what stops it from working in every form it's been tried.
Since the author was speaking to business folk, I would argue that their dream is cheaper labor, or really just managing a line item in the summary budget. As evidenced by outsourcing efforts. I don't think they really care about how it happens - whether it is manifesting things into reality without having to get into the details, or just a cheaper human. It seems to me that the corporate fever around AI is simply the prospect of a "cheaper than human" opportunity.
Although, to your point, we must await AGI, or get very close to it, to be able to manifest things into reality without having to get into the details :-)
Stephen Schwab has hit the nail on the head as far as the replacement pattern applies to software development.
But he missed the opportunity to recognize that the replacement pattern is, in fact, a broader principle. Or perhaps he did recognize it and decided to focus its scope on software development.
The broader replacement principle is that for a business, any (specialized) process or system or department represents an expense, and there is constant pressure to reduce expenses, or definitely once revenue/growth plateaus or decreases. ALL Businesses invariably, over time, attempt to replace every department or process or function with cheaper alternatives. Software Development is not unique here.
At the country level, this has led to the movement of manufacturing to China and other countries, the outsourcing of software development to India and other countries, and the hollowing out of middle America.
Does anyone have insight into whether this is a unique situation specific to our technological age? It feels fundamentally different from the normal cycle of conquest and colonialism?
Although to be fair there was a very very strong underpinning of corporations driving the wave of European colonialism from the 1600s to the 1900s- Hudson's Bay Company, Dutch East India and West India Companies, British East India Company, Royal African Company, French East/West India Companies, Danish West India and Guinea Company, the Spanish Royal Companies, Portuguese General Companies - a bit different from prior expansions of conquest by empires. But even these corporations were pinned upon expanding trading zones rather than cost management. In the 1900s and the 2000s there was some expansionism - getting countries to open up their economies - but that was managed through the IMF and the World Bank.
At the end of the day, the big dream is about accumulating power and wealth. For some people. It comes down to a fundamental world view through which people take action - some dream of scientific advancement, others of service to others, and so on. Exploration has much fewer opportunities in the modern age.
Software Development is just what a lot of this community happens to partake in.
Android started out as an open ecosystem that is slowly being closed. How much funding would it take to re-create a credible open-source ecosystem for phones?
The first couple of months are high touch after the switch. After that it's usually just smooth sailing for years. Much less work support-wise.
Been that way for my family and friends.
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