Re:Affinity for Linux is in active development
by lrvick on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @04:02PM
(#50371475)
Appreciate the perspective, but as a career hacker, none of these are excuses that register with me.
> I have no meaningful influence over the products I buy in the supermarket
I have talked to staff at small markets to stock items that give me reason to shop there more often. It is amazing what people will do for regulars.
> or my apartment building's elevator programming
Hacked elevators many times. You can buy elevator operator keys for most cities on ebay. Look for pentesters keychains.
> or the entertainment cluster of modern cars.
I have jailbroken or replaced systems like these more times than I can count.
> FreeCAD is basically unusable
I use FreeCAD to make things all the time, and it is easy to hook up automation tools and scripts to. It has come a very long way in the past couple of years.
All else being equal I do prefer the F/LOSS alternative - and even pay extra for it - but I am not against paying for an obviously-superior proprietary alternative. The real question has always been "Do the F/LOSS alternatives to this proprietary Windows-only software suck badly enough that dual-booting the nightmare that is Windows is the lesser evil?", and in a lot of cases my conclusion has been that the preferred option is to... not use any version.
To give a concrete example: FreeCAD is basically unusable, and Fusion 360 is the obviously-superior proprietary alternative which doesn't run on Linux. Do I want to design my own 3D-printable parts badly enough to deal with Windows so that I can use Fusion 360? Ehhh, I think I'll just stick to mostly printing ready-made assemblies I download off the internet. Would I pay €10 / month for a hobbyists Linux version of Fusion 360 (which is free for Windows and macOS)? Heck yeah, zero doubt!