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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I hope this doesn't mean the enshitifcaiton of Linux as we start to cater for people who don't want to learn.... We watched it with Microsoft products, though they also had a profitable reason to nerf their software.
Linux doesn't really have the profit motives that lead to enshittification.
I guess a bigger entity could try to start charging for... something... Support, maybe, but that seems unlikely to take off.
Are you aware that Red Hat alone makes billions of dollars per year off Linux?
My biggest concern is the whole "removing powerful features = user friendliness!" mentality that these big tech companies have been pushing for years.
Why make users smarter when you can make software worse and charge more for it?
The dummies don't get the bigger picture, they just see "nobody needs powerful features that make things too confusing for me!" My hope is that they don't flood Linux with this drivel - profit margin or not, it's a toxic cultre that has already been created in commercial software.
You can have both and both is actually better.
You have a system that is simple to use on the surface, auto configures itself. Has guis to do the standard tasks you need to do. Then you have everything exposed in a neat way for power users. There is no reason having a nice gui has to preclude having an infinitely hackable and well laid out system. Also the more normies who use Linux, the more corporations are forced to support it with drivers and stuff which is a win for everyone. If half of normies were using Linux on their personal machines rn, then every piece of software would support it out of the box. Since it's open source and often copyleft, you always have the option to pick your own distro, environment, and whatever else, regardless of how much corporations want to manipulate users or control software.
The main thing is that Linux should always be hacker and developer oriented first, and supporting normies should be secondary, but also not unimportant.
There will always be newbie-oriented distros as well as ones for experienced/professional users. It's alright if the former will go towards simplification, as long as we have plenty more keeping the tinkering spirit.
Besides, each and every distro has a powerful tool that can help you do everything: the terminal. No one limits you there, and unlike in Windows, terminal is heavily and commonly used.
And back in the day we had CMD that was pretty powerful. Things are great now but if Linux sees a huge flock of new users, and they become the status quo then we could be in trouble.
Worst case scenario: widows goes tits-up and everybody flocks to Linux. Solid ground for a potential commerical swing to happen.
Terminal is the only thing that is pretty much universal in all distributions. It is too essential to lose relevance. Besides, even when giving advice to new users, you can either list settings for each specific DE and possibly distribution, or you can just give a terminal command.
All I'm saying is don't get comfortable and complacent in what we have now. A sudden flood of funding can do wonders to enshitify something good.