Finally the Year of the Linux Desktop?

With Windows 10 reaching the end of support, will this finally be the long-awaited “year of the Linux desktop?”

NOPE.

As if waiting for the long-awaited Messiah to appear and make everything right, desktop Linux enthusiasts are always eager to announce “the Year of the Linux Desktop.” The fever always crests whenever a Windows® version reaches the end of support. Yet it never happens. People would rather spend big bucks – even in an economy like the present global inflationary nightmare going on – for a whole new computer with a zillion and twelve gigabytes of RAM and a multi-core processor that rivals Commander Data’s positronic brain.

It’s exactly the same issue I run across when I talk about alternatives to Fakebook and Tiktok, citing privacy issues, spyware, etc. It wouldn’t matter if alien life forms were using them to conquer humanity and turn us all into Borg drones, they will simply keep using Windows, Fakebook, etc. Even if there are free and open-source alternatives like a Linux operating system and alternate “social media” like Diaspora, Friendica, Mastodon, Hubzilla, Pleuroma, other federated alternatives that offer much more and without ads and without cost.

In the immortal words of the great prophet Morphius:

“You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.”

I have an ancient relic from 1990-something, a Dell Dimension desktop with a scant 512 megs of RAM and a barely-alive Celeron processor that runs better than when it was brand new, using antiX Linux! Current, up-to-date software and everything. It just doesn’t matter that using Linux could save people thousands of dollars over a few years. As for the privacy issues with Fakebook and Tiktok etc., “I have nothing to hide, so privacy doesn’t matter,” people will say as they continue to risk identity theft and untold other threats. To me it looks just like this:

Perhaps I can be the same way when asked to conform. I was that way during the whole stupid mask mandates episode, since scientifically speaking, wearing a mask to contain a virus is like using a chain-link fence to keep mosquitoes out of your yard. I was that way when it came to the now-infamous “vaccines” that were also mandated. I didn’t take the “threat” seriously and went blissfully on my way, flying free, out of the cage.

Perhaps people like me are a tiny minority. But when the fecal matter contacts the rotary oscillator (very soon now, in my opinion), I won’t be found in a cage, easily rounded up and sent to the ovens.