Humanity is circling around the drain

Good god, is the world taking the fun out of existing. Everything is getting enshittified and (apparently) we can't do anything about it. Whether it's AI getting force-fed down our throats, to the anonymity of the internet being threatened, to stupid articles being pay-walled (perhaps they see the irony), I'm getting tired of being forced to find ways to get what was promised to me when the internet first began.

Back in the halcyon days of 28.8bps modems and venerated search engines going by the name of Yahoo (which kids would nowadays say ya who?), we had the altruistic view that information would always be free and search engines would, shock horror, actually aim to improve their technology to find the best results. And all was good in the world. We had people writing blogs (how old-fashioned), we had geocities, we had myspace, we even had murmerings of a new upstart going by the name of google which was promising an even better experience than the much vaunted Yahoo. And so, we accepted this new upstart and we accepted The Facebook and we accepted Instagram and we accepted ... and so on.

 

Flash-forward to today, and everything is commoditised, every internet activity is tracked, and every single ad is tailored. We have all become opaque to the mass data-pillage from corporate and, seemingly, we cannot do anything about it. Firefox has also just announced that it's going to become an AI browser, Microsoft has announced that Windows is going to become agentic, and I have announced that I would have to be catatonic if I were to accept that.

 

 

I have taken a few steps to sidestepping this. I am Technology, so I do have choices. The first choice is operating systems.

•  I have installed Linux Mint
• All my hardware was automatically detected and works flawlessly 
• It also came preinstalled with Libre Office (Microsoft Office facsimile)
• I installed Lutris / Steam / Heroic for my gaming needs
• I installed gitcola for my git repo needs
• I installed Unreal Engine for my game dev needs
• I installed Winboat (alongside a fully neutered and containered Win11 VM) that handles any must-have Windows needs
• Prior to Mozilla's announcement, I was using Firefox - now, I'm leaning towards LibreWolf (a forked privacy-focussed Firefox)
• I also installed Waterfox on my android, which is (surprise, surprise) a privacy-focussed fork of Firefox 
• I will also install a Pi-hole internet proxy which will block even my TV from presenting ads to me
• I am vengeance

Now, this may seem quite daunting for the average user but, outside of Winboat having a few challenges, I would say the switch was pretty easy. Most linux distros (i.e. variants of linux) come with a package manager. Think of it like Steam, where you pick and choose what software you want to install ... and it just installs ... and it's also free.

If this isn't the (pending) year of Linux, I don't know when it could possibly be as, for me, I've had a far better and easier experience than anything Windows is doing right now. I have always wanted an alternative to Microsoft's stranglehold and, thankfully, Microsoft has bitten my hand one too many times for me to let it slide. I've now taken this metaphorical mangey mutt out the back and finally put it to rest.

Although, perhaps not all is lost. There is still at least one plucky billion-dollar company which seemingly still fights for the people. Valve (the people behind Steam) have also announced a new Steam box and VR system which will all run native linux and provide a console/VR experience that even Grandma can use. And the best part is these systems will just be PC's so you can even install Windows if you like. You own the hardware. We may be at the end times for corporate, but Valve may have provided a glimmer of a future worth sticking around for.