Largely, I believe, when phones crossed over from being basic communication devices to being smartphones, but retained their 'appliance' nature.

An entire generation thereby grew up with personal computing represented by vendor-controlled handheld appliances, and naturally regarded actual PCs in the same manner.

And their skills to manage a PC atrophied too, leading to a feedback loop.

It's even reflected in the language used by younger generations, asking if things are "allowed" or assuming things are illegal by default.

In some Linux distros like Debian, everything is illegal/prohibited until you explicitly allow it and only comes with the bare minimum of software necessary to make the OS work. Contrast that to other distros like Ubuntu where everything comes preinstalled and is very permissive. These obviously target different audiences. Smart phones are targeting different audiences too. The power users annoyed by the dumb things the device does just means you're not the target audience and are just bonus buyers for their bottom line.

> In some Linux distros like Debian, everything is illegal/prohibited until you explicitly allow it

Bit of a nitpick, but this is certainly not true of their userspace, where an `npm install` can just install a keylogger or read your ssh keys, or do whatever it wants -- except for updating your video card driver.

I would hope that someone deliberately choosing to run a headless Debian install would be wise enough to not go around running `npm install` willy nilly. In my personal experience, I've never once needed an `npm install` in Debian environment. I've only ever used them in server environments and to be honest thinking about it, that was all pre-npm when javascript was kept where it belonged in your browser and not my server. Someone screwed us all allowing JS on the server, but that's an entirely different conversation.

Well, it's enough to use a trusted app as your own user on non-trusted data. The former just has to have a memory vulnerability, which is not rare given most of it is C.

So yeah, don't be so confident in it working out. Unfortunately gnu/linux desktop is severally lacking in security (and by desktop I mean a headless personal use as well)

I used to run npm install unsupervised from a script on headless Debian that I deliberately chose dozens of times everyday. Later I moved my CI to Alpine.

Complete nonsense. You get passwordless root upon install.

Side effects of living in an authoritarian panopticon

I just don't want to have this ongoing relationship with my software vendor. When I buy an Apple computer, I don't want to have a relationship with Apple. I don't want to log in to iCloud. I don't want them deciding what software I can run and what I can't. I don't want them wagging their finger disapprovingly at me when I download and run something not "notarized" by them. I don't want them mediating my use of my own computer! When I buy a Windows PC it's even worse. Again, I don't want to log into a Microsoft account. I don't want them pushing other software on me via in-OS ads. I don't want to send telemetry back to them. I don't want them recording my screen and saving it god knows where for nebulous "features".

When I buy a table saw, I don't expect DeWalt to hang around my workshop telling me what I can and can't cut, watching and logging what wood I use and when I use it, what my finished product looks like, changing the features and buttons on the saw in the middle of the night. Why the fuck do we tolerate this from software??

It's gotten to the point that Linux is the only sensible option, and not all distributions! Some of them are letting telemetry and metrics and A/B testing creep in. And some third part Linux software is just as intrusive and demanding as commercial Windows/Mac software.

Sounds like you’d like our group: https://trustworthy.technology/

There’s an invite link there to the chat group, though I need to update it.

Great resource!

"Army of light" though

> I just don't want to have this ongoing relationship with my software vendor.

This is precisely it.

When I buy a screwdriver, I just want to use it when I need it. I don't want to have an account with Craftsman and give them any PII, etc. No, I just want to use the product I purchased.

It is really the same with any tech product. I bought it, I want to use it. I want zero contact with the manufacturer (even if I like them).

> It's gotten to the point that Linux is the only sensible option, and not all distributions!

As much as I've loved Linux for over 30 years, even Linux is becoming suboptimal. I'm mostly installing FreeBSD or OpenBSD these days.

And PC’s became appliance like with updates, accounts, and now ads

As much as a sibling comment gets it right, this is wrong:

> And their skills to manage a PC atrophied too, leading to a feedback loop.

They never built those skills. I know that a lot of us cheered the computer revolution, thinking that everyone born after would understand the things that older generations didn't get, but most didn't care and didn't learn.

Richard Stallman told y'all when it happened that it was happening

> When did PCs stop being the user's computer / operating on behalf of the user

When we connected them to the internet.

We connected them to the internet a full decade or more before this happened.

My computer has been connected to the Internet since the 90s and it's also constantly been my computer. The trick is, run software that is free.

But it was the internet that made all the spying, profiling, and tracking possible. Before that, there was no motivation, so software was developed and sold solely on its benefits to the user.

I would say it started with Chrome and Gmail

Chrome was the first major piece of software to incorporate automatic background installation of software updates without explicit user affirmation in 2008. Now, it's everywhere. I think this was an underappreciated event in the history of software freedom.

As soon as they were connected to a network and capable of participating in the business OODA loop against their competitors in real time.

I always thought the quote "you're not the customer you're the product" originated with RMS, I went to look it up before I commented and it turns out it was Richard Serra and Carlota Fay Schoolman in 1973! Just as true now as then. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/07/16/product/

Yes, and if the OS maker is not mining you for data, they are leaving mountains of cash on the table. So mine they must and mine they will. The financial incentives are overwhelming.

We should be removing those incentives at every level: legislative, societal, government and private.

People want the features that these things drive. PCs stopped being a purely "user says X, do X" thing at approximately the moment they became powerful enough to run things in the background. The idea that the computer would be helpful and do things for you beyond what you explicitly asked for is pretty attractive. People don't like being spied on, but good news, this one is all local.

Every bad day for Apple-Microsoft is another great day for switching to Linux.

You have choices. Make them.

And get an Android, install apps via F-Droid, which has really good apps by now, and they're all(?) crap-free.

Can I borrow some money? These choices cost me more than I can afford. Still using a six year old macbook I am so poor.

for me it was around the time of windows 8, that I felt my computer had a lot of things to do that weren't the application I actually wanted to use. Before that I would just occasionally feel that the system could be a little kludgy.

The charitable take is that computing has grown to expand more and more use cases, and to deliver good experiences for those use cases requires simplifying assumptions, and that's where the inherent complexity of life leaks in.

Well, people use less and less open source, and more and more vendor provided enshittified apps, which of course don't act in YOUR best interest.

Campaign for privacy laws, open standards, right to repair, interoperability requirements etc.