I don't want Linux to become as popular as Windows currently is. Its quality would decline drastically as it would be subjected to all sorts of corporate forces.
I don't want it to become a commercially driven, adversarial OS like Windows and Mac OS.
I want it to remain the free, stable and decent OS it currently is, in a comfortable 3rd place.
>I don't want Linux to become as popular as Windows currently is. Its quality would decline drastically as it would be subjected to all sorts of corporate forces.
Wrong. Linux is open-source: if you don't like it, you're free to fork it and do it your own way. If some forces tried to make Linux too Windows-like, surely someone would do this. We already have a bunch of different desktop environments because Linux people can't agree on one (one distro, Mint, even replaced Gnome with not one, but two different DEs: Cinnamon and MATE).
"Corporate forces" aren't going to somehow take over Linux and make everyone use a Linux distro that looks like Windows 11 (or worse, Windows 8). They can try of course, and they might get a ton of new people using Linux that way, but it isn't going to kill off the more traditional distros, just like Android didn't somehow kill off Ubuntu/Fedora/Debian/Mint/openSUSE/etc.
>I don't want it to become a commercially driven, adversarial OS like Windows and Mac OS.
Like Android?
>I want it to remain the free, stable and decent OS it currently is
Programming is essentially automation. You tell the machine what to do character by character, and if you get it right, the machine will be able to correctly interpret your intention, transform it into a lower level code, and then execute it.
AI is also automation but the instructions are given in a higher level language.
You still have to know how to automate it. You need to instruct the machine in sufficient detail, and if done correctly the machine will once again be able to interpret your intention, transform it to a lower level code, and execute it for you.
And you can buy an eSIM from a local carrier, which will then email you a code. It's unheard of for local carriers to mail physical SIMs to the other side of the world.
The typically tier 2 carriers are the main ideal perfect market for eSIMs. If you want to do everything online, you really can't if it relies on a physical something. I would estimate 90% of the market is for mint mobile and consumer cellular. eSIMs are a genius move progression from the old burner phone days, from the perspective of overhead costs and flexibility.
It can be more secure, but it also feels like the kind of "improvement" that's ripe for exploitation. When you put in a step where you have to ask your service provider for permission to swap the SIM, buckle up for the inevitable development of them asking for a $5, $50 or $100 "service fee" so they consider allowing it.
Couldn't they do that with physical SIM cards? On their end, record the IMEI of the first device they see connecting with a specific SIM card and then disallow connections if that SIM is used with a different IMEI.
I'm not sure if that's legal, but even if they did it, it's a lot more opaque. If they started doing it, many people would assume it to be a technical fault by the provider or the phone manufacturer, and the ensuing support calls and drama would probably cost way too much for this to be worth it in the first place. However, with eSIM, they get to redefine all the rules, since the customer has to learn how to use them from scratch anyway. And they also get access to nice, digital, software-driven workflows that can make the need to pay up apparent, as opposed to just randomly cutting service to the user.
I would love if they implemented a feature to prune media files larger than ~10MiB from the existing backup file. This way the file size would not grow to astronomical proportions so quickly.
I don't want it to become a commercially driven, adversarial OS like Windows and Mac OS.
I want it to remain the free, stable and decent OS it currently is, in a comfortable 3rd place.
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