I think something that is often underappreciated is the level of independent technical knowledge needed to install and use Linux, let alone troubleshoot it, even today.

Microsoft has a support hotline, and staff that will help you, it comes pre-installed, and every tech store under the sun will help you along.

With Linux, that’s a bit harder. Plus, although it’s often a criticism for some people, windows’ hand holding won’t let you truly fuck up, and will always have a backup ready.

Linux on the other hand will let you run it into a brick wall, and completely delete your whole laptop.

Those are generally still really good reasons people want to stick with Microsoft or Apple, since there’s a far more accessible support network around it.

And in my experience Linux portals and forums are quite gatekeepy if you’re not aware of what’s going on. That’s not the most fun place to be if you’re stuck and don’t know what you’re doing.

Linux is great and I personally would recommend it to a lot of people, but definitely not everyone, and it’s definitely not just downsides. There’s plenty of legit cases where it’s the better option, even if the tools and everything function equally.

Damn, that 2020 spike really tells a whole other tragic story of its own.

I need a t-shirt that says this.

This is a programmers mic drop.

This is awesome, definitely adding that stream to my bookmarks. Thanks for sharing!

Yeah, Sort of.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a huge fan of NFTs and do think there’s easier ways, but I would agree that taking market control away from the companies owning it would kind of be the point (but I do think you can probably still do this concept without any NFTs).

Sure, steam could allow game trading right now with no need for NFTs whatsoever, but the point would be that I can trade a game I bought through Xbox, to someone on Steam, and then go buy something on the Epic store with the money.

And all of it without some crazy fee from the involved platforms.

But that also would probably still require government intervention to force companies to accept this. Because, again, none of the companies would actually want this. NTF or not that doesn’t change.

NFTs could have been great, if they had been used FOR the consumer, and not to scam them.

Best thing I can think of is to verify licenses for digital products/games. Buy a game, verify you own it like you would with a CD using an NFT, and then you can sell it again when you’re done.

Do this with serious stuff like AAA Games or Professional Software (think like borrowing a copy of Photoshop from an online library for a few days while you work on a project!) instead of monkey pictures and you could have the best of both worlds for buying physical vs buying online.

However, that might make corporations less money and completely upend modern licencing models, so no one was willing to do it.