Unfortunately that isn't saying much, and as a long time user of Linux Desktops I can assure you that things are at least as complicated as they always were, they're just more usable now as long as you don't try to do something uncommon. And worse yet: to attain this goal distros have been becoming even more like appliances than computers! Consider why there are so many distros in the first place: it's really hard to take a standard base and convert it to your needs.

Linux distros have power and customizability, but it's not easy to use. That's par for the course.

Windows is (like macs) slowly becoming more walled gardened and controls removed from the user, in the name of making it more user friendly and un-breakable.

So either a user learns to be a power user, and go with linux, or stay as a "normal" user, and give control over to microsoft/apple/google etc. There isn't any other choice in the design space of operating systems.

I contend that it is possible to have both, it's just that no one is trying to anymore.

> So either a user learns to be a power user, and go with linux, or stay as a "normal" user, and give control over to microsoft/apple/google etc.

And this is why. Because people who have the ability and opportunity to build that future refuse to do so because they like having a wall that separates them from "normal users" so they can feel superior or something. It didn't used to be this way, a lot of effort used to go into making environments that were powerful and had a good user experience and helped onramp the user to programming. Unfortunately, we've basically thrown all that away now because it isn't where the money is.

Pure OS is truing, according to their website: https://pureos.net/

Modern Linux distros are much better at getting the OS and a lot of hardware up and running. Unfortunately, until the same can be said of applications, it's not going to be a viable alternative for many Windows users.

This chicken-and-egg problem is what is really keeping Linux off most desktops, and again rather unfortunately, it would probably need someone very well funded to start backing the effort to make it competitive enough to bootstrap a mass migration. Realistically, you'd probably need to create some Linux-based game-changer applications and/or to get emulation to the point where users can run applications written for other major platforms such as Windows or macOS to run as if native and without any legal problems. We're still a long way from either of those things being achieved without some sort of spectacular investment plus enough time for it to be turned into software.

In fact, Google has already proved that this model can work, they just did it on mobile devices instead of traditional desktop/laptop PCs. Traditional Linux communities coexist quite happily with the Android ecosystem and largely independent of it, and I see no reason conflict would be necessary with a different style of Linux desktop either.

I totally understand we've lost access to the devices, I'm just arguing that there's an other side to this whole thing.

Debatable. What makes computing so much more interesting than other tools is the ability to program them, to make the tool what you need it to be for what you want to do. 80s computer systems got this: they booted into a programming environment. 90s computer systems got this: they gave us HyperCard, VB, Delphi, etc and productivity software like Excel (which I contend is still the most widely used programming environment on earth) became programmable and extendable too. Turning first time computer users into programmers was a goal because that's what computers were for!

We don't really have computers like that anymore. What we have are appliances. Sure, they have a lot of add-on modules, but you're not encouraged to program them, to adapt them to your needs, you're encouraged to buy that from somebody else with money and/or turning over data. A lot of those "tools" seek to addict you to their usage so you can be peppered with advertisements.

You're consuming, not computing.

Not everyone cares to be a programmer, and to put computers behind that wall serves to stop people from accessing them. That feels kind of like gate-keeping, especially as the modern internet is so incredibly complicated that casual dabbling isn't really good enough to get things done - where in this case "getting things done" is pulling information from web pages, paying bills, emails, etc. It can be a hobby, absolutely, but one that you need to be dedicated to, and as such, not for most people.

You misunderstand. I don't lament the existence of appliances, I lament that the hijacking of "computer" to mean "appliance" has lead to a lack of progress in computing environments for those of us who do care about computing.

and most people are fine with that. There's a bit of an elitist mentality that goes with being a programmer - that everybody should be as interested in tinkering as they are.

Most people are dumb, non-thinking consumers of output. Most people don't want to have to open their washing machine and tweak the wires. Most people don't want their fridge to be able to do anything other than being a fridge.

And most people want their computers to play videos and read emails and websites.

That's by design, not nature.

> Most people don't want to have to open their washing machine and tweak the wires. Most people don't want their fridge to be able to do anything other than being a fridge.

The right comparison isn't the fridge, but Keurig. Imagine a fridge that only accepted a particular brand of packaged meals, and nothing else. Storing leftovers? Forget it. Random food bought at the supermarket? Need to root your fridge first. Medicine? Only if you buy an add-on. That's how modern computing looks like, particularly on mobile.

The elitist mentality is the one that insists things have to be this way - that you have to have a hard split between producers and consumers, developers and users. The old-era computing philosophy GP refers to didn't have a hard split here - it enabled one to progress all the way from a novice to a programmer, and also allowed them to stop at the point they're comfortable with.

In olden days I could have bought food from anywhere but that came with a burden of choice, I had to look for credibility of the vendor, confusing packaging, allergy info. was missing/wrong and there was always a risk of virus. Once a virus caused global outages and pandemic.

In any case, how do you know that most people only want their computers to be consumption devices? If there is no serious attempt to offer more or show most people what could be possible, you can't tell whether the current trend is genuinely what people would want or simply due to them not knowing any better.

anyone who wants to create can easily find out how to create. Esp. in this day and age of information availability.

As a counter example, there are plenty of creators on TikTok.

I think what some of us find so regrettable is the continual dumbing down of personal computing. It's already probably 90% content consumption; 9% creation of very simple content like taking photos or writing short, plain text messages; and maybe 1% taking advantage of the flexibility to do new and interesting things.

Meanwhile, I come across many things in life where someone with basic computing skills could help themselves by automating a task or getting the computer to work something out. That doesn't necessarily have to mean writing large programs; it could just be, say, setting up a spreadsheet to do a few household calculations every month.

I see so many people wasting time and losing money and missing opportunities for lack of these skills, and to me it feels the same as watching someone who lacks basic numeracy or literacy. Worse, most of the consumer electronics we use are becoming ever more trapped inside walled gardens, the devices we could use to do useful automation and make life easier are turning ever more into these dumbed down consumption portals, and the knowledge and skills to understand the difference between what is happening and what is possible are being overlooked so most people don't even realise what they're missing and how much they're being taken for a ride, usually in the pursuit of the mighty dollar.

It's sad.

Modern machines empower people to do as they are told, and nothing else.

As far as I can tell, for the most part not much has changed. The only difference is now people write to one another via Facebook instead of mailing letters to one another.

They still complain about the speed of their connections. Vulnerabilities and viruses haven't gone away. About the only things that are different is that we now take pictures with our telephones every six minutes, and the internet has increased the ability to make people mad at one another.

People are going to complain no matter what. What matters is that things are actually better - people being upset about that doesn't actually indicate whether things are better.