Unfettered Freedom, Ep. 9 - OpenOffice, Non-Free JavaScript, Linux Journal, Planned Obsolescence DistroTube
video description
Date: 2022-03-30
Related videos
Comments and reviews: 10
Tai
I must correct you DT on iPhones (I know you don't like Apple and you don't have to but let's give credit where it's due), they are supported for 5 to 6 years and lots of people use them as hand me downs for that long, hell my 2015 iPhone 6S plus is running iOS 14.2 Beta smoothly right now, my 2014 iPad Air 2 is still going with official platform support and runs just great too. It's with Android where platform support is short, mostly around 2 years but now companies like Samsung are committing to 3 years (they've already been doing quarterly Security patches for longer), so it's looking up. Google (have already been ensuring certain system stuff gets updated via Play Store even an OEM is not updating their platform) and OnePlus have been going on that already. I'm not talking about the people who must always get the new and shiny...
And my Windows 10 PC (school and work support PC this one, with my daughter's SIMS 4 gaming as well) is running on a 2012 released Core i7-3770S (with upgraded RAM and GPU of course) just pretty smoothly too, besides my Arch Linux PC which is also on a 2012 Core i3-3220, it has no Windows on it now but it was fine with Windows 10 too.
I fully agree with the fight against planned obsolescence but I think when they make statements that quote 5 years and 2 years, they are embellishing quite a bit and that undermines the good point they are trying to make. And I know there will be people who'll say but Apple make your old phone run slower, yes they do to save you from a phone that suffers blackouts because of old battery (wish Samsung did that on my Note 4 which would suddenly drop from 40% to 1% in a minute). You buy a new battery and your device is back up running fast.
reply
I must correct you DT on iPhones (I know you don't like Apple and you don't have to but let's give credit where it's due), they are supported for 5 to 6 years and lots of people use them as hand me downs for that long, hell my 2015 iPhone 6S plus is running iOS 14.2 Beta smoothly right now, my 2014 iPad Air 2 is still going with official platform support and runs just great too. It's with Android where platform support is short, mostly around 2 years but now companies like Samsung are committing to 3 years (they've already been doing quarterly Security patches for longer), so it's looking up. Google (have already been ensuring certain system stuff gets updated via Play Store even an OEM is not updating their platform) and OnePlus have been going on that already. I'm not talking about the people who must always get the new and shiny...
And my Windows 10 PC (school and work support PC this one, with my daughter's SIMS 4 gaming as well) is running on a 2012 released Core i7-3770S (with upgraded RAM and GPU of course) just pretty smoothly too, besides my Arch Linux PC which is also on a 2012 Core i3-3220, it has no Windows on it now but it was fine with Windows 10 too.
I fully agree with the fight against planned obsolescence but I think when they make statements that quote 5 years and 2 years, they are embellishing quite a bit and that undermines the good point they are trying to make. And I know there will be people who'll say but Apple make your old phone run slower, yes they do to save you from a phone that suffers blackouts because of old battery (wish Samsung did that on my Note 4 which would suddenly drop from 40% to 1% in a minute). You buy a new battery and your device is back up running fast.
reply
eidetic
I think you are wrong about iPhones. There are many issues with Apple regarding freedom, but your complaint about longevity is misguided. The devices they make simply last longer and are supported longer than the Android competition. It-s a fact that iPhone users are more likely to keep their device in use for five years or more compared to Android users. They just don-t make the POS $100 Android phones that people throw away after one year.
I-m definitely not an Apple fanboy... and five years is not enough longevity either, but I think you-re wrong to call out iPhones specifically. The quality and longevity of their latest devices is one of the reasons that Apple is predominantly shifting to make money from services (i.e. Apple Music, Apple Arcade, iCloud, Fitness etc.).
I personally can-t wait until Linux phones become viable!!
reply
I think you are wrong about iPhones. There are many issues with Apple regarding freedom, but your complaint about longevity is misguided. The devices they make simply last longer and are supported longer than the Android competition. It-s a fact that iPhone users are more likely to keep their device in use for five years or more compared to Android users. They just don-t make the POS $100 Android phones that people throw away after one year.
I-m definitely not an Apple fanboy... and five years is not enough longevity either, but I think you-re wrong to call out iPhones specifically. The quality and longevity of their latest devices is one of the reasons that Apple is predominantly shifting to make money from services (i.e. Apple Music, Apple Arcade, iCloud, Fitness etc.).
I personally can-t wait until Linux phones become viable!!
reply
wikinut1
LibreOffice (formerly StarOffice) was an excellent gift to the open-source community from Sun Microsystems back in the day.- When Oracle invaded, they treated the open source community so poorly, most developers left to form LibreOffice before Oracle dumped the corpse of OpenOffice onto Apache. This is why it's important to know the history of these communities: once you know, choices like LibreOffice vs OpenOffice becomes totally clear. LibreOffice is software that can be shared by many open-source communities from Linux, to the -BSDs, Haiku, and illumos!
reply
LibreOffice (formerly StarOffice) was an excellent gift to the open-source community from Sun Microsystems back in the day.- When Oracle invaded, they treated the open source community so poorly, most developers left to form LibreOffice before Oracle dumped the corpse of OpenOffice onto Apache. This is why it's important to know the history of these communities: once you know, choices like LibreOffice vs OpenOffice becomes totally clear. LibreOffice is software that can be shared by many open-source communities from Linux, to the -BSDs, Haiku, and illumos!
reply
JoeEatWorld
About the iPhone. I'm with you with planned obsolescence since they actually did slow down their OS because of some battery non-reason. On the other hand, the iPhone SE 1st Generation has been released in 2016 and still receives OS upgrades to iOS 14. If you look at Android manifacturers, they only provide security updates for max 2 years (a lot of time claiming more but comming short of their claims). It's tricky. But phones need to be more open of a platform like the Fairphone3 with modular design and software choices.
reply
About the iPhone. I'm with you with planned obsolescence since they actually did slow down their OS because of some battery non-reason. On the other hand, the iPhone SE 1st Generation has been released in 2016 and still receives OS upgrades to iOS 14. If you look at Android manifacturers, they only provide security updates for max 2 years (a lot of time claiming more but comming short of their claims). It's tricky. But phones need to be more open of a platform like the Fairphone3 with modular design and software choices.
reply
TheSulross
Thrilled to hear about re-emergence of Linux Journal - definitely checking that out. Becoming involved with retro computing hobby has focused my own thoughts as to how much of a lifetime our computing devices could potentially have. Apple iPods were one of the worse when it came to shelf life - within two years they would start having problems. We're at a place now to where a device could conceivably be designed well enough to last one to two decades. Not the kind of thing hardware manufacturers want to hear or emphasize
reply
Thrilled to hear about re-emergence of Linux Journal - definitely checking that out. Becoming involved with retro computing hobby has focused my own thoughts as to how much of a lifetime our computing devices could potentially have. Apple iPods were one of the worse when it came to shelf life - within two years they would start having problems. We're at a place now to where a device could conceivably be designed well enough to last one to two decades. Not the kind of thing hardware manufacturers want to hear or emphasize
reply
Fuseteam
had to do research and eread gnu's essay to realize what is meant by -non-free javascript- no wonder gnu isn't as relevant as they want to me.
the least they could do is call it -minified javascript-!
so many more developers would react to it.
so many more developers would understand what they are talking about it.
and as usual they don't address why developers minify javascript in the first place and what they should do to solve the problem they are trying to address in the first place
reply
had to do research and eread gnu's essay to realize what is meant by -non-free javascript- no wonder gnu isn't as relevant as they want to me.
the least they could do is call it -minified javascript-!
so many more developers would react to it.
so many more developers would understand what they are talking about it.
and as usual they don't address why developers minify javascript in the first place and what they should do to solve the problem they are trying to address in the first place
reply
mrnobody
first things first: love this podcast dt :-)
Now a question...
if you press crtrl+S in firefox you
get every single file for the website, discounting the s I believe (example google fonts, but even this you can get them pasting the link in the url bar). So I can't get very well how are those js files close source. (It's a question). Remember that js runs on the client, so it's right there in your PC, you can open it.
I guess it's not about closed source but about some particular scripts.
reply
first things first: love this podcast dt :-)
Now a question...
if you press crtrl+S in firefox you
get every single file for the website, discounting the s I believe (example google fonts, but even this you can get them pasting the link in the url bar). So I can't get very well how are those js files close source. (It's a question). Remember that js runs on the client, so it's right there in your PC, you can open it.
I guess it's not about closed source but about some particular scripts.
reply
Heroe
I had already read this guy's story on r/linux and it reminds me of my brother this summer, we were in vacation ( with very bad almost unusable 4G ) and he brought my old 8 year old hp laptop running w10 to watch some stuff with VLC, few days after the laptop's fans weren't working anymore, I installed him a Linux mint version I found on my Downloads directory and although it's kinda bloated it worked flawlessly to watch movies on VLC even with non working fans haha
reply
I had already read this guy's story on r/linux and it reminds me of my brother this summer, we were in vacation ( with very bad almost unusable 4G ) and he brought my old 8 year old hp laptop running w10 to watch some stuff with VLC, few days after the laptop's fans weren't working anymore, I installed him a Linux mint version I found on my Downloads directory and although it's kinda bloated it worked flawlessly to watch movies on VLC even with non working fans haha
reply
Jay
Similar story about Linux bringing an old laptop back to life... I have an old HP dv6000 series that was sitting around doing nothing. I tossed Zorin Lite on it, and it boots in about 30 seconds from a 5400RPM drive. I can't even get Windows 7 to boot on this machine (it came with Vista). I keep it in my basement next to the sofa when I need to look something up on the interwebz.
reply
Similar story about Linux bringing an old laptop back to life... I have an old HP dv6000 series that was sitting around doing nothing. I tossed Zorin Lite on it, and it boots in about 30 seconds from a 5400RPM drive. I can't even get Windows 7 to boot on this machine (it came with Vista). I keep it in my basement next to the sofa when I need to look something up on the interwebz.
reply
David
I'll be honest. I never have understood the non-free JS issue. It feels like people with pitchforks that have never built a website yelling at web developers. I only use open JS libraries and I usually don't even minify my code because I want it to be readable. I guess the biggest exception being the integrations with proprietary API's and applications (not developed in-house).
reply
I'll be honest. I never have understood the non-free JS issue. It feels like people with pitchforks that have never built a website yelling at web developers. I only use open JS libraries and I usually don't even minify my code because I want it to be readable. I guess the biggest exception being the integrations with proprietary API's and applications (not developed in-house).
reply
Add a review, comment
Other channel videos
