I am not saying that more people using Linux is bad or that people shouldn’t use it (I mean, check my own post history; I am a recent convert myself), but if it reached the kind of saturation that Windows or Apple enjoys, it would bring not liberation but enshittification.
Nor am I trying to be some kind of elitist “the plebs don’t deserrrrrrve it” schlub; hell, I use Linux Mint Cinnamon and have to have a guide to handhold me through all but the most rudimentary, familiar-to-me-as-a-Windows-user tasks.
However.
A bar to entry (even such an ankle-high one as there is now) keeps Linux relatively off the radar of large, moneyed interests that would otherwise descend onto Linux distros and enshittify them in a heartbeat.
In other words, rather than “everyone who uses Linux will then see how bad they’ve had it under Windows and how anti-consumer certain software companies (let’s say Adobe for example) have been treating them!”, the more likely outcome would be “now there is Adobe Photoshop Linux Edition that is exclusive to the paid Adobe Linux distro” or other similar shackles and lockdowns and limitations (for which your credit card is the key), and the alternatives, not having ad money or corporate backing to prop them up, would be left by the wayside as other such enshittified distros/softwares gained users and traction.
Hell, just because a non-enshittified alternative to an enshittified software exists doesn’t mean people will know about or use it. To use an example, Excel is hardly the only way to make a spreadsheet. But it’s the one that is used, taught, known, documented, and widespread. It doesn’t matter that [some other software] is superior in every way if no one knows or cares about it.
Admittedly this is kind of my shower-thought guess and it’s not as if I have sat and thought through this thoroughly, but heck, here we are. Lay it on me.
So, I’m not a recent convert to Linux. I’ve been using it pretty much exclusively for over 20 years now. And almost entirely Gentoo and Arch.
And I’ll tell you… the Gentoo community is hard core. The sort of hard core that will not tolerate any enshittification. They’ll make sure Gentoo stays pure.
And I’m not just talking about “free from corporate influence”. If Gentoo announced that moving forward, only SystemD would be supported as an init system (and I don’t think that’s likely any time soon), a big part of the community would fork Gentoo and declare they could take OpenRC (or runit or whatever) away when they could pry it from their cold dead hands.
No matter what enshittified Linux distros come to exist in the future, that lifeline of purists will always provide a way to buck enshittification. And that’s a lifeline that the Windows and Mac ecosystems don’t have.
So, while I have little doubt that enshittified Linux distros will exist (indeed already do exist – after all what is Android but enshittified Linux?), I think opting out of said enshittification will continue to be an option for the foreseeable future.
Two caveats:
I predict a similar future and it is why I decided to come to Mint rather than another begrudging Windows upgrade (I was staunchly against Windows 10, but upgraded to it anyway because at that time in life I needed a new laptop, and it came with Windows 10 installed and during that stage I had bigger things on my plate than what operating system I was using/how to install and operate a new one).
While I am only taking baby steps into the Linux environment now, I hope that by the time the walls really start to close in, I will be technically adept enough to join the more hardcore holdouts.
It’s a little like with Android. It’s GPL, it’s hackable, there’s custom ROMs and such. Android 2.x hardly required anything to get it rooted or to install custom ROMs. Bootloaders were often unlocked by default, security options like RO-system or SELinux weren’t present in many cases. Rooting required you to download an app, press a button and done. Some devices even came pre-rooted.
Since then a lot of things have changed. A lot of manufacturers (recently Samsung) disabled unlockable bootloaders. Security has been enhanced a lot, to the point that rooting without an unlocked boodloader is all but inexistent. Even if you can root, SELinux stops you from doing anything with root. If your device lets you run custom ROMs, these are more and more hampered by Google closing the sources for Android modules (like e.g. the messages app) and by security measures like Play Integrity, which mean that you can’t run vital apps on rooted Android.
On Android 2.x/4.x rooting was purely liberating. You could do much more with rooted Android than without, while not losing anything at all. On modern Android, rooting is a tough choice, since there are legitimately things you can’t do on rooted Android any more (e.g. online banking if your bank decides to require strict Play Integrity verification).
I can see the same thing happening on “free” Linux variants if Linux were to ever become really mainstream.
For example, imagine Valve closed-sourcing Proton or purposely making sure that Steam only runs on SteamOS. I don’t see them doing that any time soon, but it would be possible. And Steam is big and important enough that I could imagine that a large amount of people people would then just buy a PC with SteamOS preinstalled.
Everything you’re saying is good and valid points. And yes, the future may be bleak for Linux like the present is for Android.
But at the same time, I’m tapping out this very comment on a rooted phone with an unlockable bootloader without any of the Google apps and in fact running zero proprietary apps.
I think the option to use Linux the unenshittified way in which it was always intended to be used will be there for the foreseeable future the way it, quite frankly, still is for Android despite Google’s best efforts at killing open mobile computing.
The option does exist and it will likely continue to exist, it just depends on what kind of disadvantages you are comfortable running into.
If you are running zero proprietary apps, that probably means:
Just to name what I thought of off the top of my head.
It’s certainly possible to live with these disadvantages, but for most people that wouldn’t be the choice they would take.
Well, I use Lemmy and lurk Mastadon, but I don’t use Facebook or anything else like that. I use Google Chat on my computer. But honestly not having things that incessantly ding at me in my pocket is as much a feature as a limitation.
I did say “proprietary apps”. I’m sure I’m running some proprietary drivers and device firmwares and such. My camera quality is definitely dog shit, though.
I haven’t had issues doing online banking on a desktop/laptop(/Raspberry Pi) with a browser. My bank’s 2FA just requires access to email. (So far.) I’m in the U.S., though.
Sure. But there are decent FOSS games like Shattered Pixel Dungeon and Mindustry. Plus I use Lemuroid (emulator suite) a fair amount.
Not sure what you mean by this. Like, GPS? Yeah, I don’t use that.
Yeah, no idea. I haven’t used public transit to speak of.
Also, I don’t use Android Auto. Or my work’s 2FA provider’s proprietary app, but I have a YubiKey for that. I don’t have any cloud backup to Google Drive or anything. Yeah, you’re not wrong that there’s a lot you can’t do on a phone under the restrictions I’ve placed on my phone, but I’d rather deal with those things than the enshittification I’d get with proprietary apps.
I singled out the camera, because all the processing that gives Android cameras decent quality usually happens inside the app, not inside the hardware driver part.
Essentially Google Maps. The only FOSS thing that I know is OpenStreetmaps and it’s really bad.
That’s totally fair and a good personal choice if you can live with it. Not knocking that at all. I’m just saying that it’s probably not a choice that many people would make, because FOSS is sadly really lagging behind proprietary software in many areas. And that’s not knocking FOSS either, because FOSS has a massive funding problem and FOSS devs also want to eat.