this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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Unironically yes. Let's gatekeep anything that people can fuck around with that can't be fixed by a simple factory reset button.
Learning more about technology and having more control can be really empowering. I don't think dumbing things down even more is going to make people more tech literate and it's definitely going to make them more dependent on shitty corporations.
Many years ago I advocated for using Linux on the servers we sold to customers. They didn't need to do much. Run a DB server mostly. This was accepted happily by my managers as we could save costs on Windows licences.
Over the next five years, as those machines started to go wrong, it became my job to fix all of them, alongside all my other duties. So now we use Windows again, because our low wage helpdesk monkeys can actually talk people through most faults.
Sometimes people don't want to be empowered. They just want their shit to work.
Ironically factory resettable Linux distros are coming and will be more mainstream. Fedora plans to convert all Workstation users to Silverblue/Kinoite within 5 years. Being immutable distros, a factory reset option will soon arrive at them. Other distros are now also experimenting with this.