Honestly? It is.
Getting a understanding of what you do is something that is moving towards “lost arts” territory regarding everything computer related. Yeah, you will not get the solution to your problem THAT FAST, but if you find out why the thing you want to do did not work and understand how to make it work you will benefit in the long run.
If you only use software that is created by people you like… well… i guess your only choice will be an abacus…
In reality, what Chromebooks provide is a reinvention of the good old mainframe and terminal principle. In theory (like my recent - half joking - 9front comment) this is something that would be really easy to set up with nearly all Linux systems and especially immutable ones.
My take would be:
Put an sign up / sign in form as a “first boot” message in a distribution of your choice where you can specify (or have pre-filled by an organisation) a central server (could be something fancy like Nextcloud or something simple rsync based) where your whole profile folder gets synced to. After that: If anything goes kaputt just roll back the sync. Or “powerwasch” (to keep the ChromeOS terminology) the system to a clean state and re-sync your home folder.
In theory something that could all be implemented with a little scripting in an afternoon.
9front (with enough volunteers and a modern browser) could be exactly that.
I use Devuan and TDE because the setup is so incredible boring and dusty that i do not have to get acquainted with anything new (SystemD, Wayland… whatever hipster WM is currently cool) and keep working with the tools i like.
Well, look at it the other way around:
Those niche places act like a filter, pretty much alike as the whole internet was about ~20 years ago. Yeah, there may be fewer people around, but those people tend to be quiet a bit more interesting.
Nah, “the rest of us” is ruining the internet by following the people in the top of the trash pit.
You know… nobody is stopping you from self hosting, building a website or digging a gopherhole?
Devuan + Trinity Desktop
Moved over there since Debian switched to Sytemd. It is boring, dusty… but it works and stays out of my way.
I still doesn’t like it…
Flatpaks together with “immutable” distributions, Wayland and systemd are a heresy, a crime against the UNIX principles, a disgrace in the eyes of of SED and AWK. REPENT! Save your immortal core dumps and return to the one true /home !
Absolutely! I observe this behaviour on myself: I am nowadays even sometimes coding on my phone (though, the experience is still… “suboptimal”), but for everything else? Its mostly fine.
Well, that was a sentence often heard at a former employer… we employees often followed up with “… yeah, but the family name is Corleone”
Nah, '95 was best. BBS systems were in their final bloom, Usenet was better than everything that came afterwards (OK, the fediverse maaaay be a good successor) and there were still the COOL systems (Atari, Commodore…) around even after their respective companies had abandoned them.
You also could make some decent money if you had some rudimentary coding skills… I financed my first motorcycle (for which I hadn’t a driving license, mind you) by writing a (QBASIC? Visual Basic? I don’t remember) software for managing car parts for some local used car dealers.
Just to mention it:
gopher://sdf.org
There is no better place for plain and real content
They didn’t get most references in the 80s/90s either… this is the reason why nerds seemed weird…
For one, they are still sold new for a surprising low amount of money (e.g.: https://www.bueromarkt-ag.de/farbband_kmp_0633_0501_fuer_epson,vt-farbbaender_und_-rollen,vh-epson,vg-lq_500,p-06330501.html) but re-inking them using just rubber stamp ink is also a possibility.
The best investment of my life was buying an Epson LQ500 back in… I don’t know… '95 perhaps? All this years, and even after months or even years without use it will happily awake from its slumber to once again scream and punch dots on to its never ending but ancient supply of fanfold paper
The thing is: If you ask her out (in real life, not through some shitty app) and you are not super creepy or awkward about it you already have an advantage above 90% of the dudes who write weird messages to her… it’s the date when you find out more about her
Well regarding plan9port, it is really, really easy to acquire… just clone the Github repo (https://github.com/9fans/plan9port), run ./INSTALL and everything else sorts itself out ;-)
Well, I personally have a soft spot for the gopher protocol and the community that formed around it… it’s in a way the better internet