As someone from a developing country, windows 11 contributes to higher digital inequality because of its unnecessary high hardware requirements. If they don’t support windows 10 for a long time, we will suffer a great toll.

And unfortunately, people around here barely use linux and developed quite a repulsion for it, which only makes things worse for ourselves…

It’s hard not to hate microsoft when we live on the ugly side of capitalism.

Have you ever tried abiword? It’s really lightweight.

Nice article! Are you the author? If so, I’d like to give you a suggestion: the part about the deepin Linux story and technical background is interesting enough to be its own article. That way, it would be more findable on web searchers and probably help a lot of people who look for information on it, which is a bit scarce in english.

Depends on the device. Some allow the bootloader to be unlocked officially. Root is usually needed when you unlock the bootloader unofficially, using some hack.

Also, /e/os supports an official gsi, which can be installed without root.

That said, these phones aren’t suited for people that need absolute security and privacy. They’re more experimental and aimed at enthusiasts of the project who want to support it.

I can see why eos raises some concerns, but i find it to be an interesting alternative with moderate potential. We definitely need more alternatives to standard android.

Could you elaborate about the privacy part?

Some software developers prefer to host their own repos and have more control over the release process and/or don’t want to fill all the criteria for being included on f-droid, so they create their own repos. Some of these apps can still be found on vanilla fdroid, but often aren’t updated so frequently.

Izzyondroid, on the other hand, is a different project, aimed at hosting different apps that are usually from smaller devs and can’t be included on fdroid yet, for different reasons.

The greatest thing about fdroid is that it allows anyone to create their own repos and you aren’t forced to depend on anyone.

In addition, pirated physical media used to be an easy way for non techy people to acquire media in developing countries.

5 years already? Shit, I’m old.

Gnu can be used to describe the gnu project, the gnu license or the gnu coreutils. In this context, they mean that Linux by itself isn’t enough to be the a free desktop, and needs the gnu software to be the system they care about. (There can be controversies on whether gnu is needed or not, since it’s possible to create a distro without the coreutils, but let’s not get you confused right now)

The weird thing for me is that by paying to use, you will need to be uniquely identified, and that opens doors for losing privacy in several ways. How is that addressed by kagi?

The incredible thing about these articles is that they don’t make the slight mention of lemmy.

That one linked is a well written summary of what happened, but it’s partial if they don’t include the migration that happened, even if it wasn’t that big.

Good idea, worth checking.

Lost it on “Windows with literally 0 issues” lol

I understand your bad experience with GSIs, but I think it’s a step in the right direction. The way custom roms have been made through the years isn’t sustainable for the long run. It’s too much work for the few people involved, that goes obsolete so fast. But with GSis, the projects will one day be able to maintain just a few images, and the porting community will just have to focus on unlocking the devices.

GSIs aren’t working 100% today, but it’s something still new in the perspective of manufacturers, and the tendency is to have better support with time.

Just to put things into perspective, my experience, as someone poor from a third word country, is just the opposite. In the past, only the more expensive phones had custom rom support, and the cheaper ones I got access to, wouldn’t even get results if I searched for the model on xda. Nowadays, even cheap chinese phones or the ones locally manufactured in here allow me to put a GSI and have a customized experience, up to date with security patches.

Ah, I see. But in that case, won’t the server have access to my messages in plain text?

In that case, won’t the server have access to my credentials?

With all the respect, to deny the progress we had in the last decade seems a bit stubbornish and counterproductive.

In the 2000s, uo to early 2010s, not even a basic non techy user could properly use linux without assistance, and nowadays, they can use it normally. Most of them just need a working browser and a good UI.

I don’t say that out of nowhere. I’ve been doing some work in initiatives for digital inclusion in my country, and we’re having great results with linux nowadays, while it was impossible some years ago.

There’s still a lot that needs improvement, but we’re nowhere near the state we were just one decade ago.

We are trying, but the bootloader seems to be unlockabe, and that’s pushing us back.

But what do you do when services and institutions in general require you to use whatsapp? That’s what is mostly keeping me from deleting that app.

I have been looking at this possibility, but running a bridge means that I will need to self host a service, which adds one more point of failure, while not really removing whatsapp from my life, so I’m not convinced it’s a good alternative.