This is a bit of a rambling post where I'm mostly just trying to articulate some thoughts I've had for the past few weeks in the hope that I can eventually put it to rest and move on but feel free to chip in your thoughts on Mastodon or better, your own blog.
A few weeks ago, I picked up a new tablet for the family to replace the Amazon tablet we had, which wasn't seeing a lot of use because it was tied to the Amazon App store, which sucks and is missing almost every app you decide to look up on it. Yes, I'm aware of Fire Toolbox and yes I tried that first but it never resulted in a clean experience without compromises.
The new tablet is nice hardware, it's an Honor 10 something or other but that's not really important, it has a nice screen, drawing on it is cool, it has Google Play and whatnot but what surprised me after setting it up it was how many Terms of Service I had to wade through just to reach a working system. It must have taken me the best part of 20 minutes and like anyone who has a life to live I didn't spend much time reading what I was signing away.
By the end of it I was exhausted and felt uneasy because now my shiny new tablet didn't feel like it was mine any more, which I know is literally true given the very-non-free state of modern phone/tablet computing but I am sure they used to do better at hiding that fact. This feeling lingered with me and each time I used it since, although it's very capable of doing all kinds of neat things, I don't feel like I can every really trust it enough to feel comfortable giving it my data.
I suppose in a way I got a taste of what many Windows 11 users are feeling having their favourite operating system take over their computing experience against their wishes and best interests. This hasn't directly impacted me because I haven't been deeply invested in Windows desktops since Windows XP. True, it was with XP that Microsoft pushed the controversial Windows Genuine Advantage tool that rightly put a chill down the spine of many users as it was the first time they noticed Microsoft pulling the strings of it's platform, but besides that Windows XP could feel like home, it was comfortable and it did what you asked, most of the time. In retrospect I reckon XP was the peak for Windows as a Personal Computer operating system and everything added since then has been subtractive on the whole.
Now Microsoft is playing the strings like it's a globe-spanning musical instrument. Windows 11 computers are playing to their tune and not to their user's much at all any more. I've seen that many are leaving for Linux and reporting that they found what they've been missing for a long time; a private place, a home of their own.
Linux hasn't been unblemished in the tug of control between the builders and the users. Long term Ubuntu users will remember Canonical's misguided experiment with Amazon ads integration in their Unity desktop but that was quickly back-pedalled after community revolt. In general FOSS advocates are much more sensitive to the power-play and less tolerant the scales tilting the wrong way.
Because of this, FOSS operating systems will be the last bastion of Personal Computing, the rest will be cloud servers vacuuming up then holding your data for ransom, and operating systems that spy on you and add features no-one asked for.
I know we have it good in the FOSS world and should spread the good word but it would also be nice to see that freedom be more accessible on closed platforms like tablets and phones without making huge compromises in hardware quality to make it work but I think we'll get there eventually.