Lionel Dricot Celebrates His 20 Years of GNU/Linux Life (in Gemini Protocol and HTTP)
Lionel Dricot (Wikipedia, Gemini intro) has just published "20 years of Linux on the Desktop (part 1)" in Gemini Protocol and HTTP. Part 1 is quite long and detailed. There's more to come.
Dricot writes a lot about the Net and Software Freedom. Now he writes about GNU/Linux. While I'm still customising the KDE stuff on the 'new' laptop (even this morning) I can't help but wonder if I should write more technical articles (like I used to 20+ years ago). Dricot reads our site and probably has read it for quite some time; he occasionally points out that AGPL is the way to go, Software Freedom is about power, and the Web went the wrong way. To quote Dricot: "Most of the time, I don’t bother anymore. The link I clicked doesn’t open or is wrangled? Yep, I’m probably blocking some important third-party JavaScript. No, I don’t care. I’ve too much to read on a day anyway. More time for something else. [...] Something strange is happening: it’s not only a part of the web which is disappearing for me. As I’m blocking completely google analytics, every Facebook domain and any analytics I can, I’m also disappearing for them. I don’t see them and they don’t see me!"
Dricot mostly published in French, but his English language articles are good. He typically gets it. Moreover, he articulates his ideas very well in English, not his preferred language.
Dricot recognises that the Web is basically a pile of garbage and JavaScript 'webapps' are a waste of time.
Gamification is not what makes social control media catch on. DEBT* is what makes it catch on, i.e. idiots willing to lose a lot of money for ages, wrongly believing they can convert addicts into money (net income, even profit). █
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* Twitter is now "worth" less than its total debt; the company sees a mass exodus and it stopped paying bills amid lawsuits and potentially fatal scandals [1, 2, 3]; Twitter tries selling uses' data right now [1, 2]. Maybe Musk reckons that an elected Donald Trump can bail "X" out somehow, just like he funneled a lot of taxpayers' money into other Musk "brands". Trump's various businesses only ever needed to pretend to be successful, so there's a commonality there.