It goes hand-in-hand with a post-revolution socialist society. Proprietary software is essentially private property, which would be eradicated in a worker's state. It would most likely not be a first priority for the new state as there are more pressing matters - for the US for example, the dismantling of the military and the closing down of all international bases - but it would be inevitable with socialism.
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
9 points (90.9% liked)
Linux for Leftists
1148 readers
1 users here now
A Community for all leftists wanting to join and being part of a community that talks about Linux, Unix and the Free Software Community
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
I was trying to figure out how to say what you said so I'll just piggy back. I agree that moving from proprietary to foss is definitely one aspect of the "withering away of the state". Engels didn't explicitly write about software for obvious reasons but yeah lol.
I think, and this is probably preaching to the choir, but one thing that we can keep doing is just supporting foss and try to get more people to use and contribute. Regardless of if the revolution were to happen tomorrow, we've definitely seen a big uptick in open source being used over the last 20-30 years.
I've seen people bring up that Lemmy/Mast/kbin are open source and my thoughts is always "as it should be". We are living through what I think might be a software revolution as more people get fed up with data harvesting and proprietary services. Will this era last? Who knows but I hope it does.
Funny enough, Linux and foss were what actually started my radicalization to the left. Back when I was using Ubuntu 9.10 I just kept asking why this wasn't this the norm? I mean Linux growing pains baggage aside that is.
This reminds me: it's time to install Linux. But I don't know where to start. I'll open another thread and see if anyone can help.
I'd recommend Mint. I've been using that for a while, but recently switched to Debian. Debian 12 seems promising and can have proprietary firmware on it easier set up for new users now. Debian is what people prefer for stability.
Id recommend just finding an old laptop and putting something like mint on it if you are starting. Some people like Manjaro for the newish packages. Some people like Arch linux for the actually up to date packages.
If you really want to go security hipster, use Alpine linux
if you want to have lots of useful tools to make rich people's lives interesting install Kali Linux
If everything seems to easy for you and you like a challenge, try Gentoo.
If you want to have all of the options available when you install it, use linux from scratch.
One of my friends swears by Nix OS, I think that has some interesting implications.
if you care more about security use some variant of BSD
If you really like rust use Redox OS.
If you want something open source but can run windows programs, use React OS.
I wouldn't recommend ReactOS for daily use unless it's seen massive improvements in the last year or so
ReactOS
I've seen this OS mentioned before and I can't help but think of some shitty OS written in javascript using react to render the desktop.
Sorry for mentioning React OS. I just think it is funny and amazing the divercity of work has been done in the open source community. Yes I know not all of them are stable and well tested. That is why i recommended Mint. The other stuff is harder to use or best used for edge cases.
I know nothing about ReactOS, I just can't see the term "react" in a software related context without thinking of facebook's javascript UI framework.
When you talk about proprietary firmware, does that make Debian more stable with e.g. a better range of graphics cards, printers, mice, etc?
Security-wise, a standard set up that keeps out phishers, keyloggers, 'hackers', etc, out will do.
So with, rust/Redox, does that use a different language for the terminal than other distros?
Thanks for all the other info!
Edit: typo
So with, rust/Redox, does that use a different language for the terminal than other distros?
It means that the RedoxOS system is written in Rust (Kernel, Drivers, Userspace, etc.). Redox itself is still just a POSIX compatible UNIX-like System similar to Linux. Which means you can run things like Bash on Redox just like on Linux. But unlike Linux or BSD, both of which are Monolithic, Redox follows a Micro-kernel design. For the average user this doesn't mean much really. But I wouldn't use RedoxOS as it is right now since it's still in its early stages of development. It runs on a limited set of hardware and is still pretty rough around the edges.
If you just want an OS to use for things like web browsing, programming or writing documents then any up-to-date Linux distro will be your best bet. They all use the same software, with some minor exceptions. The difference is in the design.
Thanks for explaining.
If you just want an OS to use for things like web browsing, programming or writing documents then any up-to-date Linux distro will be your best bet. They all use the same software, with some minor exceptions. The difference is in the design.
This is the kind of insider knowledge I was hoping for! Front-end design-wise, I'm probably happy with something that looks like an early OSX or Windows 95. Newer OS's have become at once very simple and yet so complicated that no files or settings can be found.
If you'd like to have something that looks identical to a Windows 9x setup, check out Chicago95. It's a project that aims (and succeeds!) at making the XFCE4 desktop environment look as close to as possible to Win9x! I use it personally because that is my preference, and I have to say it looks amazing! Here's screenshots!
Memories! Look at that tiled background and the file manager! Beautiful. If I installed that, I'd be tempted to connect a floppy disc drive, too, for real authenticity.
If you want something open source but can run windows programs, [use any Linux distro and wine]
Depending on your level of tech knowledge, my rec is Arch or Linux Mint. Linux Mint is practically good to go OOtB. Pop!_OS is another one that has gained popularity over the last few years. NixOS I think is the new distro that is getting a lot of buzz right now but I'm gonna wait to see where it goes and how it matures before looking at it. I've settled on Mint and have been using it for about 5 years as my daily driver now.
Segueing off your arch recommendation, RebornOS is a really good beginner friendly Arch based repo.
Is there a strong reason why someone would move away from a 'beginner-friendly' distro? Is it mainly wanderlust?
I'm in debian because it uses less ram.
I've played with alpine linux for the wonderlust of seeing if I can work with all of the alternative smaller code bases for the theoretical stability it provides.
Why use bash when you can use ash?
Why use the unauthorized escalation bugs of sudo, when you can use doas?
Why use all of the gnu tools of stallman when you can use the smaller version of those tools with busybox?
Why use the garganuan sprawling systemd when openrc has a much smaller codebase and fewer vulnerabilities?
I have to say I'm a fan of light (lite?) software.
I can't tell you how pissed off I was when browsers switched to infinite ram. One day they were capped at using ~4gb ram and the next, I need a new machine.
In general, I just prefer the idea of only using enough resources to do what I need a program to do. Options are great, but e.g. with a word processor all I need is stability, footnotes, a few tags, grammar/spell check, and track changes. A few other features are nice to have but almost all the rest is unnecessary bloat and bugs, for me.
I was able to run LMDE (linux mint deiban edition) on a 3 gb Imac with libreoffice installed by default, I don't know if I'd still reccomend that but it would freeze if I had too many tabs open
I think my old laptop has 8gb ram. This is all assuming it turns on after five or six years!
right now I have a 32 GB ram tower computer playing a small game, a crazy looking terminal emulator, a spreadsheet program and a browser and it's still using less than 2 GB of ram. Debian cinnamon is good for me.
Impressive. Do you need a lot of ram nowadays to play games? Or do you have so much so you can play games at the same time as having other programs open?
Depends on the game. I like playing 0ad and that never seems to use that many resources, but I haven't checked much. Some steam games can be a bit more intense but 8gb should be fine for most games. Steam proton https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton offers a compatibility layer to play steam games as if they were in wine and works pretty good. I'm trying to game less so I stick to open source versions of pacman and tetris. I was playing rimworld but that shit was like cocaine to me. Rimworld runs fine on linux as well as windows. One thing I like to do is use "yt-dlp -f" to download playlists audio only from various sites, save them in a particular folder, then "cd" into that folder, then "mpv *" to play all of the audio files in that in the background. You can play minetest with the mineclone mod (to be similar to minecraft) while listening to various audiobooks podcasts and lectures that way.
8gb should be fine unless you are playing a AAA game, but if you already bought the games, you can try it out.
Thanks.
Oh, so with Linux, you can run a command that downloads files from websites? That's handy!
I've not bought any games for a good while and I usually buy older games. Although I do have my eye on three games that keep getting mentioned around here: Hearts of Iron 4, Victoria 3(?), and Disco Elysium. One day, maybe – part of it is finding the time!
yt-dlp lets you download videos by scraping the site and find audio or video files in there depending on how they are embedded.
wget can help you scrape the contents of a web page. This often allows you to get the html of a web page, but if it ends in a file extension you can download a file there too.
w3m allows you to view a pure html page in the terminal and it will not display css or javascript. This can sometimes bypass paywalls and allow you to read. sometimes not.
I think all of those games are supported on steam.
That's brilliant. Does w3m provide a safe way of reading http sites?
With wget and file extensions, is there anything obvious that I should be cautious of, for being dangerous?
w3m either works or it does not work, but either way you are safe from downloading dangerous things, javascript abusing your computer, but it does not protect you from DomainNameServer or InternetProtocol address surveillance by your ISP.
The cool thing about linux is anything that you download is not marked as executable by default so you'll need to chmod +x the filename for it to run.
File extensions don't need to exist in unix systems but are helpful to know what kind of file they are for practical reasons. (windows and mac force extensions in filenames)
If you are trying to transfer one file type to another in ffmpeg it does use the extension to re-encode it.
for example:
yt-dlp -f 251 https://yewtu.be/watch?v=NfjsLmya1PI #uses yt-dlp to download file in format of the highest quality sound for youtube|
to create a new copy of this downloaded file with an .ogg file extension do the following:
ffmpeg -i 'Present Day, heh... Present Time! Hahahahahahaha! [NfjsLmya1PI].webm' present_day_time.ogg #then you can delete the original and then play the new one that you have if you have mpv installed rm 'Present Day, heh... Present Time! Hahahahahahaha! [NfjsLmya1PI].webm' && mpv present_day_time.ogg
Thanks for clarifying and for the instructions.
I'm hearing lots of support for mint. Does it get updated still? I remember looking into one distro and then learned that it was no longer being maintained – one of the reasons why I didn't look back into it till now.
My tech knowledge is fair, I'd say. I'm not too scared of breaking things, using terminal commands, or looking through the settings. It's just that I've not needed to do much for a long time other than open word and a browser.
Mint is very much still being maintanied. And it's a great distro, especially for beginners. You get the benefits of Debian (one of the oldest still maintained, very used, many programs are packaged for it), Ubuntu (one of the most used on the desktop/laptop, large company behind it, most (proprietary) software is written with it in mind), with great tools out of the box for a lot of stuff that makes it more beginner friendly and actually somewhat better on the desktop.
Ah, so some distros, like Ubuntu, are big enough that software companies, like Adobe but not necessarily Adobe, make compatible software? Any chance this includes Word, or is LibreOffice the go to word processor for Linux?
I think Mint has LibreOffice included already.
If not, you have the Software Center app on Ubuntu and Mint. It's like the Windows Microsoft Store: a GUI to browse for installable software.
3rd option is to install it from the command line
No, it's just than when/if some company makes software for "Linux", some of the time Ubuntu is actually the only one they support.
Last I checked, still no Word (except in the browser), so LibreOffice is still the go to.
"Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your proprietary software" - Karl Marx
Of course. Without private property there is no longer any possibility of proprietary software existing, nor any benefit. We wouldn't necessarily need licenses anymore, but something like the current copyleft model comes close.
Thank you for all the up votes and comments folks. Btw, I use Gentoo :D
But I think, RMS himself is anti communist
Sadly, yes, but I think this is caused by him living in the usa. On his personal webpage, he tells people to vote green party, so he probably hit a roadblock after progressivelib.
Honestly would be very surprising if RMS wasn't a hardcore libertarian or Anarchist.
Although these days he maybe following the ideology of Marxism-Stallmanism
That's one occasion where we can gleefully separate the work from the person.