FOSS Forever

I recently ditched Windows.

Not entirely by choice, mind you. I bought my PC in 2016, and at 9 years old, it's beginning to show its age a little bit, but in no way more than how Microsoft hath decreed it unworthy of Windows 11. Basically, my CPU was "unsupported" because it didn't have this additional chip Microsoft demands be on every Windows 11 PC.

Originally, I thought this would be fine, that I would just stay on Windows 10 for the foreseeable future, except Microsoft also decided they would just stop supporting Windows 10 entirely. Technically, under their original timeline it would have stopped being supported like 2 years ago, but they extended the deadline twice because people kept refusing to "upgrade" to Windows 11.

So I start hunting for a new PC, but damn, PC parts have gotten expensive lately. As I was wondering how I would get a PC that met my needs, Framework announced their desktop, which seemed perfect for me. I placed a pre-order, knowing that it would arrive prior to Microsoft's cut-off, so I wouldn't ever be using an unsupported operating system.

But, while I was waiting, I got to watch tech advance (and collapse) around me. If you've seen any of my earlier posts, you'll know I also got myself a Steam Deck, and yeah, gaming on Linux is very much a thing now. So I start researching and discover pretty much the only things that don't work properly on Linux are Microsoft Office and Adobe tools. Well, I'm happy to use something like LibreOffice, and I've never used anything like Photoshop, so I was kinda free to explore Linux as an operating system. At the same time, Microsoft were starting to force Copilot into all of their products, so I felt like not being allowed on Windows 11 helped me kinda dodge a bullet.

Of course, had I realised all this before ordering a new PC, I could have arguably just put Linux onto my old PC, but like I said, it'll be a decade old before long, so an upgrade was due anyway. I recently got the new PC in my hands, and immediately put Fedora KDE onto it.

Oh my god is it so nice. I wouldn't say it's perfect, there are some things Windows handles automatically that Linux doesn't, but overall now that I have things set up, it's a dream, and no matter what I'm doing, I no longer have this weird feeling that I'm being watched, because unlike on Windows, there's no telemetry, no tracking, no privacy-breaching nonsense, it's just my PC, and me.

So why am I praising FOSS in general? Linux is a big part of that, but it's all the other, smaller decisions I've made to take more control of the software I use day-to-day. I'm now using the Floorp browser instead of Firefox, and I have VSCodium instead of plain VSCode. I've come to the decision that if a piece of software isn't fully open source, I'm not really interested. Games are a different, more complicated story, but for productivity tools and such, open source or bust. And with the rise of AI tools, you can even replicate your favourite apps with a simple text prompt.

At this point, I think it's safe to say the only reason I would use a proprietary piece of software is if I have no other choice.

Viva la FOSS.