How to do everything
February 3, 2025 3:06 AM Subscribe
Introduction to a Self Managed Life: a 13 hour & 28 minute presentation by FUTO software does not actually cover *everything* but if you're at all interested in making self-hosted open source software the backbone of your digital life it's a pretty good start. From Louis Rossmann.
I am a non-coder and only marginally technical person that has a deep interest in getting my digital life out of the corporate platforms, but finds the heavy lift as embodied here (13 hours?) insurmountable. There is definitely a business opportunity for someone if there is any way to make this path doable for laypeople.
posted by reedbird_hill at 4:37 AM on February 3 [3 favorites]
posted by reedbird_hill at 4:37 AM on February 3 [3 favorites]
I self-host a lot of stuff, not quite this much. Setting this all up would probably take days if you knew what you were doing. Maintaining it would be even more work.
posted by procrastination at 4:39 AM on February 3 [3 favorites]
posted by procrastination at 4:39 AM on February 3 [3 favorites]
I would imagine this is an invaluable resource for somebody who’s eager to dig into the topic, but it’s hard to think of a more intimidating framing than “13.5 hour presentation.”
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:47 AM on February 3 [5 favorites]
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:47 AM on February 3 [5 favorites]
From Louis's intro:
I started using GNU/Linux in 2002, back when I saved up the $79.99 necessary to buy SuSE Linux 8.1 Professional as a boxed set from the Best Buy across the street from the Staten Island mall for my 14th birthday. I started hosting my own servers in 2005, and put together systems for my own business’ use since early 2011. I didn’t do everything outlined here immediately; it was slowly built piece by piece over a long time. I never documented it in a way that would allow my grandma to use it. In 22 years, I can’t remember reading GNU/Linux documentation that felt like it was designed for normal people. That’s what I’m looking to do here.posted by flabdablet at 4:49 AM on February 3 [22 favorites]
From 2002 to the present, two things remain true:So much of the open source user experience is not designed for normal people. Whether it was using NDISwrapper 20 years ago to get wifi to work or messing with SCSI emulation to burn a CD, GNU/Linux is pain. It’s all pain.
- You can do cool things with GNU/Linux
- These cool things are hidden behind a labyrinth of
- Half baked software
- Horrible UI
- Forum elitists & gaslighting assholes who will make you think YOU’RE the crazy one for expecting things to work
- People that will tell you to “RTFM” with no regard for whether that documentation actually works
- black boxes. I mean literally hidden behind actual black boxes. For six months. Unfixed. On the stable version of a server operating system (that bug is present in 24.10 long-term-stable even today).
It’s painful enough that people will happily trade their data, sovereignty, privacy, and their rights to avoid ever having to deal with it; and I can’t blame them.
This has to change. As of 2024, most of you live your life:Now is a time like no other for you to feel empowered to build systems that you control & understand.
- Dependent on closed source software.
- Running on someone else’s server where you can be kicked off at any time.
- Forced into forced arbitration or your device won’t work anymore.
- With no privacy.
- Training AI with your creations.
My goal with this guide is not to tell you the way you HAVE to do something, or to imply that my way is the best. My goal is to inspire you by showing you what’s possible. You don’t have to be a computer engineer or someone with an IQ of 160 to figure this all out. And, admittedly, to inspire capable developers to look at the pain points scattered throughout this guide (of which there are many) and decide “enough is enough; let’s make this better.”
The fun here is in building your own system, your own way. This is my sovereign cloud; there are many like it, but this one is mine. I can’t wait to see how you build yours.
AlbertCalavicci: A lot of work went into convincing businesses that "Open Source" was just another business paradigm. It took years, but they eventually believed ESR enough to make it so. Their trick was to find either areas where they could get away with proprietary software, or to turn everything into a service and use that as their horrible source of leverage against your life.
Self-hosting avoids this. Self-hosting with FOSS systems avoids proprietary software companies coming after you (See horror stories of innocent users wrung dry by Oracle licensing raids). But yeah, using this stuff is an uphill climb for a benefit of self-reliance. That's why it appeals to libertarians like ESR who want to brag about their martial arts and firearms skill.
But the original goal was purely about mutual aid, and building a commons of useful software. It was about contributing. And yes, that does mean it limited its focus to the subset of people who could contribute to code projects. Proper mutual aid is very much a "from each according to ability; to each according to need" kind of setup, and that was never balanced out. Partly this is because the Old Guard at the FSF became a corrupt gerontocracy to prop up a cult of personality around RMS that should have dissolved decades ago.
I get that the personalities around this stuff are horrible. Rossmann hasn't tripped any of my detectors yet, but I also haven't had the time to sit through too many of his (literal!) armchair rants.
Presenters like Veronica Explains! give me hope that we can build more accessible communities for this sort of thing. I hope more people support her so she can continue to make a living doing this.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 5:19 AM on February 3 [10 favorites]
Self-hosting avoids this. Self-hosting with FOSS systems avoids proprietary software companies coming after you (See horror stories of innocent users wrung dry by Oracle licensing raids). But yeah, using this stuff is an uphill climb for a benefit of self-reliance. That's why it appeals to libertarians like ESR who want to brag about their martial arts and firearms skill.
But the original goal was purely about mutual aid, and building a commons of useful software. It was about contributing. And yes, that does mean it limited its focus to the subset of people who could contribute to code projects. Proper mutual aid is very much a "from each according to ability; to each according to need" kind of setup, and that was never balanced out. Partly this is because the Old Guard at the FSF became a corrupt gerontocracy to prop up a cult of personality around RMS that should have dissolved decades ago.
I get that the personalities around this stuff are horrible. Rossmann hasn't tripped any of my detectors yet, but I also haven't had the time to sit through too many of his (literal!) armchair rants.
Presenters like Veronica Explains! give me hope that we can build more accessible communities for this sort of thing. I hope more people support her so she can continue to make a living doing this.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 5:19 AM on February 3 [10 favorites]
There’s a small foss/floss collective in my city that has a similar service, and they will host and maintain it for you at a nominal fee. This seems like a better solution to me than spending hours cluelessly building up a system reliant upon user-hostile software. Like, it isn’t going to just be 13 hours, it’s going to be hours of reading forums and making mistakes and buying the wrong hardware - it’s going to be an intensive, expensive hobby for a few months which cools down to a specialised, time-consuming hobby, which has minimal returns to improving my life.
I bake my own bread, pickle vegetables, and cook almost everything I eat from scratch. I have friends who make their own clothes, including making the threads to sew things together. I’ve been involved with vegetable growing collectives. The difference between learning these skills and rolling your own “sovereign cloud” is that weaving, growing, and baking involve interaction with the real world. I think, for me, it’s the incidental interactions with people and things that have been the most beneficial to my growth.
posted by The River Ivel at 5:22 AM on February 3 [7 favorites]
I bake my own bread, pickle vegetables, and cook almost everything I eat from scratch. I have friends who make their own clothes, including making the threads to sew things together. I’ve been involved with vegetable growing collectives. The difference between learning these skills and rolling your own “sovereign cloud” is that weaving, growing, and baking involve interaction with the real world. I think, for me, it’s the incidental interactions with people and things that have been the most beneficial to my growth.
posted by The River Ivel at 5:22 AM on February 3 [7 favorites]
i'm more interested in arguing to anyone who will listen that FOSS is simply another technology business paradigm, rather than a progressive lifestyle choice.
The view that the best digital life is no digital life has a great deal to recommend it, especially to those of use who have actually bothered to look into the motivations of the OG Luddites.
That said: arguing for that view in an online discussion space is... how shall I put this? an interesting choice.
posted by flabdablet at 5:26 AM on February 3 [5 favorites]
The view that the best digital life is no digital life has a great deal to recommend it, especially to those of use who have actually bothered to look into the motivations of the OG Luddites.
That said: arguing for that view in an online discussion space is... how shall I put this? an interesting choice.
posted by flabdablet at 5:26 AM on February 3 [5 favorites]
A loaf of bread and a pile of shit are both sources of useful nutrients. Don't try to act like you're pulling the wool from my eyes because I prefer to eat bread.
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:30 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:30 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]
You don’t have to be a computer engineer or someone with an IQ of 160 to figure this all out.
Yeah, see, it’s that “figure it all out” part that people don’t have (and don’t see the need to devote) time for. And, yeah, you kinda do have to have some level of specific talent to even want to dip a toe into this particular pool.
I’m not exactly a tech illiterate, and I’ve been good friends over the years with many linux evangelists, and listening to them go on and on about how doable it is, and then listening to them go on and on about wrestling with software, hardware, configurations, drivers, etc. etc. etc. made me very sure in my conviction to stay far, far away from that world.
.........
The fun here is in building your own system, your own way.
It looks fun only to those already disposed to living/working in that world. For most laypeople, there’s absolutely no fun, nor necessity, apparent in any of this. It’s as if you’re saying it’s fun to rebuild the transmission in your car — Your way, your ratios!
posted by Thorzdad at 5:36 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]
Yeah, see, it’s that “figure it all out” part that people don’t have (and don’t see the need to devote) time for. And, yeah, you kinda do have to have some level of specific talent to even want to dip a toe into this particular pool.
I’m not exactly a tech illiterate, and I’ve been good friends over the years with many linux evangelists, and listening to them go on and on about how doable it is, and then listening to them go on and on about wrestling with software, hardware, configurations, drivers, etc. etc. etc. made me very sure in my conviction to stay far, far away from that world.
.........
The fun here is in building your own system, your own way.
It looks fun only to those already disposed to living/working in that world. For most laypeople, there’s absolutely no fun, nor necessity, apparent in any of this. It’s as if you’re saying it’s fun to rebuild the transmission in your car — Your way, your ratios!
posted by Thorzdad at 5:36 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]
At the same time, there's always so much hostility against the idea of going your own way on this stuff. I know that a lot of that is bound up in a history of stances of moral superiority on both sides.
But you know? Whether or not it's something you, specifically, should do, I think it's good for us as a society to have people who know how to do this, who want to learn how to do this, who teach other people how to do this, and who help support and create the tools it takes to do this.
Just like it's good to have people around who know how to do their own auto repairs, or sew, or do electronics, or build houses, or grow, prepare, and preserve food, or any number of skills that not everyone has and a lot of people find intimidating, frustrating, or just too time-consuming to deal with. Not to mention people with all kinds of specialized or in-depth knowledge, obtaining which often takes huge amounts of time, effort, and talent.
I think it benefits all of us to have people around us who knows or do all kinds of things. Some of which can become more or less valuable depending on how the world's functioning at any particular time.
So maybe instead of hostility towards this kind of effort, it's worth approaching with something like curiosity - which doesn't mean you have to do it yourself! but maybe it's kinda interesting? - or just "hey, not for me right now, but I'm glad somebody's doing it".
posted by trig at 5:54 AM on February 3 [16 favorites]
But you know? Whether or not it's something you, specifically, should do, I think it's good for us as a society to have people who know how to do this, who want to learn how to do this, who teach other people how to do this, and who help support and create the tools it takes to do this.
Just like it's good to have people around who know how to do their own auto repairs, or sew, or do electronics, or build houses, or grow, prepare, and preserve food, or any number of skills that not everyone has and a lot of people find intimidating, frustrating, or just too time-consuming to deal with. Not to mention people with all kinds of specialized or in-depth knowledge, obtaining which often takes huge amounts of time, effort, and talent.
I think it benefits all of us to have people around us who knows or do all kinds of things. Some of which can become more or less valuable depending on how the world's functioning at any particular time.
So maybe instead of hostility towards this kind of effort, it's worth approaching with something like curiosity - which doesn't mean you have to do it yourself! but maybe it's kinda interesting? - or just "hey, not for me right now, but I'm glad somebody's doing it".
posted by trig at 5:54 AM on February 3 [16 favorites]
It's also important to see the framing of this document. Rossmann has been giving pieces of this information out to an eager audience for years, and they appealed to him to put it all into one large guide. This isn't a project of pure ego aimed at you, the casual reader: it's very much an answer to a community of people asking for a complete guide they can use for their own purposes.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 5:56 AM on February 3 [11 favorites]
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 5:56 AM on February 3 [11 favorites]
The main benefit of
spending hours cluelessly building up a system reliant upon user-hostile software
is that every hour so spent also builds a little more clue.
Same applies to baking, pickling and cookery. Sharp knives and hot ovens are super user-hostile in the hands of the clueless compared to, say, a McD's cheeseburger, but that's not really an argument for home cookery being in no way worthwhile.
If there's one tendency I've observed across everybody who really enjoys their hobby, it's a somewhat evangelical desire to help other people enjoy it too. And sure, that can get about as annoying as the actual Evangelical who will. not. shut. up! about the salvation and redemption that they just assume everybody else is as desperate for as they apparently are themselves.
But if you're right now teetering on the edge of being genuinely terrified over the literal insanity of the techbros currently trying to leverage their domination of the world's IT systems into actual rule over the whole planet, and you value keeping both some kind of digital life and your own privacy, then I hope some of what's presented here will be useful to you.
posted by flabdablet at 6:02 AM on February 3 [11 favorites]
spending hours cluelessly building up a system reliant upon user-hostile software
is that every hour so spent also builds a little more clue.
Same applies to baking, pickling and cookery. Sharp knives and hot ovens are super user-hostile in the hands of the clueless compared to, say, a McD's cheeseburger, but that's not really an argument for home cookery being in no way worthwhile.
If there's one tendency I've observed across everybody who really enjoys their hobby, it's a somewhat evangelical desire to help other people enjoy it too. And sure, that can get about as annoying as the actual Evangelical who will. not. shut. up! about the salvation and redemption that they just assume everybody else is as desperate for as they apparently are themselves.
But if you're right now teetering on the edge of being genuinely terrified over the literal insanity of the techbros currently trying to leverage their domination of the world's IT systems into actual rule over the whole planet, and you value keeping both some kind of digital life and your own privacy, then I hope some of what's presented here will be useful to you.
posted by flabdablet at 6:02 AM on February 3 [11 favorites]
A loaf of bread and a pile of shit are both sources of useful nutrients. Don't try to act like you're pulling the wool from my eyes because I prefer to eat bread.
Fair point. Done!
In return, perhaps you could avoid having a pop at me for preferring my home grown tomatoes to those tasteless leathery juggling balls they sell at the supermarket, even if I do need to fertilize them with piles of shit.
posted by flabdablet at 6:11 AM on February 3 [5 favorites]
Fair point. Done!
In return, perhaps you could avoid having a pop at me for preferring my home grown tomatoes to those tasteless leathery juggling balls they sell at the supermarket, even if I do need to fertilize them with piles of shit.
posted by flabdablet at 6:11 AM on February 3 [5 favorites]
Sorry flabdablet et al., I meant my comment in reply to AlbertCalavicci but I failed to make that clear (I was pre-coffee and feeling Salty. I started typing when it would have been right after the other response to them. But to be clear, FOSS is the bread in my example. But surely dung beetles do not prefer it :)
And, yeah, you kinda do have to have some level of specific talent to even want to dip a toe into this particular pool.
That's like saying you need some specific talent to want to get on the internet: sure, that claim was somewhat reasonable thirty five years ago, and that was when my (late-middle-aged, near-zero computing experience) mother decided to get on to email lists as an early form of social media.
You don't need 13 hours of video to get started in FOSS or break away from Google/Microsoft/Apple dominating all your digital life though. It's also not fair to compare replacing your computer's OS with keeping the stuff you have on the system you have.
E.g. you don't have to rip out your OS and fiddle with installing Linux, you can just buy a Linux computer next time you are due for a new computer. The fair comparison here is when you switch OS at the time you get new hardware. In that light, switching to Linux is more akin to the frustration of switching from Android to iOS, or Mac to PC etc. Sure, it feels a little clumsy at first, but it's worth it if you see advantages in the new system.
Honestly, when I bought this nice Linux pc I'm typing on a few years ago, switching was probably easier than the switch I made twenty some years ago from Windows to Mac. The systems just aren't that different anymore, and I don't have to do any more admin or futzing with drivers bs now than I did on my Macs or Windows machines. Sure, I do dick around with the printer sometimes, but ultimately still less than the average since I first started dicking around with printers in the mid nineties.
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:51 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]
And, yeah, you kinda do have to have some level of specific talent to even want to dip a toe into this particular pool.
That's like saying you need some specific talent to want to get on the internet: sure, that claim was somewhat reasonable thirty five years ago, and that was when my (late-middle-aged, near-zero computing experience) mother decided to get on to email lists as an early form of social media.
You don't need 13 hours of video to get started in FOSS or break away from Google/Microsoft/Apple dominating all your digital life though. It's also not fair to compare replacing your computer's OS with keeping the stuff you have on the system you have.
E.g. you don't have to rip out your OS and fiddle with installing Linux, you can just buy a Linux computer next time you are due for a new computer. The fair comparison here is when you switch OS at the time you get new hardware. In that light, switching to Linux is more akin to the frustration of switching from Android to iOS, or Mac to PC etc. Sure, it feels a little clumsy at first, but it's worth it if you see advantages in the new system.
Honestly, when I bought this nice Linux pc I'm typing on a few years ago, switching was probably easier than the switch I made twenty some years ago from Windows to Mac. The systems just aren't that different anymore, and I don't have to do any more admin or futzing with drivers bs now than I did on my Macs or Windows machines. Sure, I do dick around with the printer sometimes, but ultimately still less than the average since I first started dicking around with printers in the mid nineties.
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:51 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]
BTW, about the 13 hours -
I haven't had time to watch the videos yet (and I'd never heard of Louis Rossman so I don't know how his stuff usually works). But the first link in the OP is not to the videos but instead to a one-page wiki about the content of the videos, with a big table of contents and a little info about each part. The second link in the OP is to an intro to the videos, of which there are two (part 1, part 2). Each of them has a ton of timestamps that as far as I can tell correspond to the wiki table of contents. The timestamps are also listed in the video descriptions.
So (I think) you can just look at the TOC or video descriptions to see if there's anything relevant to your interests and then jump in straight to those parts, no need to watch the entire thing.
posted by trig at 7:10 AM on February 3 [10 favorites]
I haven't had time to watch the videos yet (and I'd never heard of Louis Rossman so I don't know how his stuff usually works). But the first link in the OP is not to the videos but instead to a one-page wiki about the content of the videos, with a big table of contents and a little info about each part. The second link in the OP is to an intro to the videos, of which there are two (part 1, part 2). Each of them has a ton of timestamps that as far as I can tell correspond to the wiki table of contents. The timestamps are also listed in the video descriptions.
So (I think) you can just look at the TOC or video descriptions to see if there's anything relevant to your interests and then jump in straight to those parts, no need to watch the entire thing.
posted by trig at 7:10 AM on February 3 [10 favorites]
you don't have to rip out your OS and fiddle with installing Linux, you can just buy a Linux computer next time you are due for a new computer.
Ironically, ripping out the affiliate-marketing-bloatware-bundled OEM-supplied OS and fiddling with installing Windows from a clean Microsoft release has been the path of least total irritation for Windows users for at least ten years at this point. And there has been a lot of effort put in by the maintainers of newer distros like Mint and Pop! OS toward smoothing out the initial installation process. As things stand now, installing Linux is actually easier than cleaning up a typical OEM-butchered Windows, especially given the amount of useful free application software that a typical Linux distribution comes bundled with.
posted by flabdablet at 7:12 AM on February 3 [3 favorites]
Ironically, ripping out the affiliate-marketing-bloatware-bundled OEM-supplied OS and fiddling with installing Windows from a clean Microsoft release has been the path of least total irritation for Windows users for at least ten years at this point. And there has been a lot of effort put in by the maintainers of newer distros like Mint and Pop! OS toward smoothing out the initial installation process. As things stand now, installing Linux is actually easier than cleaning up a typical OEM-butchered Windows, especially given the amount of useful free application software that a typical Linux distribution comes bundled with.
posted by flabdablet at 7:12 AM on February 3 [3 favorites]
Perhaps MeFi could offer a page where FLOSS/FOSS techies could offer their services (free or for pay) to those who would like to take advantage of the FUTO manifesto but do not want to become 13.5-hour hard-core techies themselves - a sort of Mechanical MeFiTurk?
posted by zaixfeep at 7:19 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]
posted by zaixfeep at 7:19 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]
Didn’t we have a Linux fight, like, two weeks ago?
posted by Lemkin at 7:22 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]
posted by Lemkin at 7:22 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]
20+ years of experience condensed into a 13+ hour online course, for free? Now That's What I Call Best of the Web.
posted by otherchaz at 7:23 AM on February 3 [9 favorites]
posted by otherchaz at 7:23 AM on February 3 [9 favorites]
I provide computer assistance to very low tech people every working day. As in, they literally don’t know what a “web browser” is. It can be challenging.
That’s what the Linux experience is like for the most of the rest of us.
posted by Lemkin at 7:29 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]
That’s what the Linux experience is like for the most of the rest of us.
posted by Lemkin at 7:29 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]
I have devoted my professional life to making the documentation of open-source software easier to read. I care about this enough to have just created this account so that I can interact with people who also care about open-source software and its documentation. I am not Louis Rossmann, but I have a similar long list of procedures for setting up open-source systems and a similar list of complaints about the gatekeeping and plain old incoherence that turn people off using open-source software.
I think that there's no reason to reflexively impugn Rossmann's work on account of it being long. Rossmann is documenting a great many systems that serve a great many different aims. The thirteen hours of video are not required reading. His purpose, as he says, is to make these obscure matters understandable by average people. These are complex systems, and setting them up and maintaining them require care and attention. The alternative to this, as he repeatedly says in his wiki, is that you do not own or control your data, you are forced into binding arbitration when you have a disagreement with the companies that own and control your data, and you are at the mercy of the dangerous whims of the psychologically-alien owners of the California-microprocessor-descended technology industry.
To complain about the length of Rossmann's work seems to misunderstand him completely. It is to charge him with being a gatekeeper when he is precisely the opposite of that. To complain about his work on the basis of such a misunderstanding is an embarrassing mistake that runs the risk of misleading people who read threads like this only partially.
Anyone here who reads any part of Rossmann's wiki and finds it obscure is welcome to write to me, and I will do my best to translate. Indeed, this is the only thing that I do with my professional life.
posted by zirconium_encrusted at 7:32 AM on February 3 [21 favorites]
I think that there's no reason to reflexively impugn Rossmann's work on account of it being long. Rossmann is documenting a great many systems that serve a great many different aims. The thirteen hours of video are not required reading. His purpose, as he says, is to make these obscure matters understandable by average people. These are complex systems, and setting them up and maintaining them require care and attention. The alternative to this, as he repeatedly says in his wiki, is that you do not own or control your data, you are forced into binding arbitration when you have a disagreement with the companies that own and control your data, and you are at the mercy of the dangerous whims of the psychologically-alien owners of the California-microprocessor-descended technology industry.
To complain about the length of Rossmann's work seems to misunderstand him completely. It is to charge him with being a gatekeeper when he is precisely the opposite of that. To complain about his work on the basis of such a misunderstanding is an embarrassing mistake that runs the risk of misleading people who read threads like this only partially.
Anyone here who reads any part of Rossmann's wiki and finds it obscure is welcome to write to me, and I will do my best to translate. Indeed, this is the only thing that I do with my professional life.
posted by zirconium_encrusted at 7:32 AM on February 3 [21 favorites]
Lemkin, if only people who won't use Linux could let a Linux FPP go by without storming in with "I HATE THE WAY YOU ARE SMUG AT ME" takes out of literally nowhere.
Like, at least wait for someone to say something absurd like "everyone should use Linux" before flinging that stuff out. It's like the people who get mad when they see a vegetarian cookbook, I swear.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 7:32 AM on February 3 [7 favorites]
Like, at least wait for someone to say something absurd like "everyone should use Linux" before flinging that stuff out. It's like the people who get mad when they see a vegetarian cookbook, I swear.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 7:32 AM on February 3 [7 favorites]
Working with FOSS is like listening to late Coltrane. There's a lot of truly magnificent stuff in there, but you do need to give yourself permission to let the unfamiliar just kind of wash over you until bits of it begin to click.
posted by flabdablet at 8:09 AM on February 3 [6 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 8:09 AM on February 3 [6 favorites]
As someone with (another) late-Coltrane post on deck for tonight, that’s a tempting metaphor. But listening to a master at work is a long way from being to play the music yourself.
And perhaps an unintended extension of that metaphor: Coltrane, even after he was the most acclaimed saxophonist in the world, continued to practice so obsessively that his wife would come downstairs in the morning and find him asleep in a chair with the horn still in his mouth.
posted by Lemkin at 8:18 AM on February 3
And perhaps an unintended extension of that metaphor: Coltrane, even after he was the most acclaimed saxophonist in the world, continued to practice so obsessively that his wife would come downstairs in the morning and find him asleep in a chair with the horn still in his mouth.
posted by Lemkin at 8:18 AM on February 3
I offer the following site link with extreme trepidation, in the spirit of 'even the devil can speak the truth when it's in his interest.'
Flabdablet, as OP of this page, I invite you to review and flag-for-deletion this comment if you deem it appropriate.
[WARNING] The site was named and offered to serve red-pillers, alt-righters, tinfoil-hatters, et al. I do not endorse the site's non-Linux views/opinions. The link to the site I note below is cached from the Internet Archive. Do not give the actual site your clicks and as always YMMV.
landchad.net [archive.org mirror] is "a site dedicated to turning internet peasants into Internet Landlords by showing them how to setup websites, email servers, chat servers and everything in between. Starting a website is something that can be done in a lazy afternoon and costs pocket change. Most of the internet’s problems could be solved if more people had their own personal platforms, so the objective of this site is to guide any normal person through the process of installing a website."
The site's instruction sheets are relatively editorial-free and quite straightforward. They include how to set up your own "Let's Encrypt"-cert-protected website and storefront using Fosspay (to Stripe). You may find this an easier entry point into the topics Rossman covers. Don't rely uncritically on their vendor recommendations — a 'privacy-friendly' vendor could also mean one that is known to cater to the bad guys.
posted by zaixfeep at 8:21 AM on February 3 [3 favorites]
Flabdablet, as OP of this page, I invite you to review and flag-for-deletion this comment if you deem it appropriate.
[WARNING] The site was named and offered to serve red-pillers, alt-righters, tinfoil-hatters, et al. I do not endorse the site's non-Linux views/opinions. The link to the site I note below is cached from the Internet Archive. Do not give the actual site your clicks and as always YMMV.
landchad.net [archive.org mirror] is "a site dedicated to turning internet peasants into Internet Landlords by showing them how to setup websites, email servers, chat servers and everything in between. Starting a website is something that can be done in a lazy afternoon and costs pocket change. Most of the internet’s problems could be solved if more people had their own personal platforms, so the objective of this site is to guide any normal person through the process of installing a website."
The site's instruction sheets are relatively editorial-free and quite straightforward. They include how to set up your own "Let's Encrypt"-cert-protected website and storefront using Fosspay (to Stripe). You may find this an easier entry point into the topics Rossman covers. Don't rely uncritically on their vendor recommendations — a 'privacy-friendly' vendor could also mean one that is known to cater to the bad guys.
posted by zaixfeep at 8:21 AM on February 3 [3 favorites]
Lemkin: fwiw, you have my absolution to not use or learn anything about any open source stuff of any kind, anywhere, ever.
But maybe step back and leave room for the ones who are interested? [though, on update, jeez - there's so many people doing open-source stuff and self-hosting stuff, why post to the ones doing it for evil.]
posted by trig at 8:25 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]
But maybe step back and leave room for the ones who are interested? [though, on update, jeez - there's so many people doing open-source stuff and self-hosting stuff, why post to the ones doing it for evil.]
posted by trig at 8:25 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]
Lemkin, if only people who won't use Linux could let a Linux FPP go by without storming in with "I HATE THE WAY YOU ARE SMUG AT ME" takes out of literally nowhere.
"Welcome to the Vegetarian Linux Gun Club. We're vegetarian, we like Linux, and we're into guns! Please note we have no views on Gayness or Communism; if you are pro-these things, please visit our friends at the Gay Communist Gun Club." :-)
posted by zaixfeep at 8:31 AM on February 3
"Welcome to the Vegetarian Linux Gun Club. We're vegetarian, we like Linux, and we're into guns! Please note we have no views on Gayness or Communism; if you are pro-these things, please visit our friends at the Gay Communist Gun Club." :-)
posted by zaixfeep at 8:31 AM on February 3
Indeed, this is the only thing that I do with my professional life.
By myself, I wouldn't have no boss
I'd be writing up my essential FLOSS
Welcome to metafilter, zirconium_encrusted! Tweezed to meet you.
posted by flabdablet at 8:43 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]
By myself, I wouldn't have no boss
I'd be writing up my essential FLOSS
Welcome to metafilter, zirconium_encrusted! Tweezed to meet you.
posted by flabdablet at 8:43 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]
FOSS (ESR) is a business model. FLOSS (RMS) is a philosophy.
Ass Möde is a way of life.
posted by zaixfeep at 8:44 AM on February 3
Ass Möde is a way of life.
posted by zaixfeep at 8:44 AM on February 3
listening to a master at work is a long way from being to play the music yourself
Don't need to be able to play it to curate an enjoyable collection of it, though.
posted by flabdablet at 8:59 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]
Don't need to be able to play it to curate an enjoyable collection of it, though.
posted by flabdablet at 8:59 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]
(answer to my inevitable nerd project question: "It’s four letters that sound nice together")
posted by ver at 9:00 AM on February 3
posted by ver at 9:00 AM on February 3
One interesting thing about the business model of companies using open source stuff is that it can be a positive impact for you even if you never interact with that company! A recent example is Steam/Valve using Linux for their Steam Decks. They put a lot of effort into making a translation/compatibility layer to run windows games on Linux, called Proton. Proton is FOSS, and relies heavily on WINE and other pre-exiting FOSS. While you can mess around with it for free, most people won't, and the Steam-y parts of it are still proprietary. So there's some minor benefit for some non-steam users, even though Valve has purely selfish/profit motives in their business decision to make their hardware run their version of Linux.
But the other thing is that now there is suddenly big market for Linux games, and so lots of developers are just making their games work on Linux natively rather than mess with the compatibility layer! And so relatively overnight, Linux has become a much better platform for games in terms of sheer number of releases that will just work out of the box. So while I appreciate the non-corporate aspects of FOSS, I also don't really mind if some company decides they can profit in way that benefits me even if I don't pay them.
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:04 AM on February 3 [4 favorites]
But the other thing is that now there is suddenly big market for Linux games, and so lots of developers are just making their games work on Linux natively rather than mess with the compatibility layer! And so relatively overnight, Linux has become a much better platform for games in terms of sheer number of releases that will just work out of the box. So while I appreciate the non-corporate aspects of FOSS, I also don't really mind if some company decides they can profit in way that benefits me even if I don't pay them.
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:04 AM on February 3 [4 favorites]
why post to the ones doing it for evil
Because the guides on that site are indeed pretty solid, and there's joy to be had from using the substantial body of work they've put together there for purposes they'd doubtless find deeply irritating.
posted by flabdablet at 9:13 AM on February 3 [3 favorites]
Because the guides on that site are indeed pretty solid, and there's joy to be had from using the substantial body of work they've put together there for purposes they'd doubtless find deeply irritating.
posted by flabdablet at 9:13 AM on February 3 [3 favorites]
If you want to use open source software for cloud stuff but don't want to host it yourself, you can pay a company to do it for you. You need to (somewhat) trust this company, but at least you're a paying customer rather than a 'product'.
I use Nextcloud this way and it solves the same five problems mentioned in the article (and quoted above). Added bonus: the server is not in my own house, so I can use it for offsite backups. (That's useful in case of fires, floods, etc.)
posted by demi-octopus at 9:19 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]
I use Nextcloud this way and it solves the same five problems mentioned in the article (and quoted above). Added bonus: the server is not in my own house, so I can use it for offsite backups. (That's useful in case of fires, floods, etc.)
posted by demi-octopus at 9:19 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]
zaixfeep> FOSS (ESR) is a business model. FLOSS (RMS) is a philosophy.I would be cautious about limiting your "philosophy" to these two people as the two extremes of some axis. Both are problematic individuals with really shady pasts, particularly surrounding sexual topics.
So taking this back to the FPP, what is Rossmann's philosophy behind this? All I can tell you is what I've watched of his, which tends to spring from anecdotes in his hardware repair and servicing business. Most of the videos I've seen start with an anonymised customer system that could not be repaired or upgraded in a way that the customer reasonably expected would be possible. Often this is due to deliberate vendor lock-outs, planned obsolescence, or shady supply-chain issues. The moral of each tale amounts to "Support your Right To Repair in everything you buy."
This is a message he's spreading to a community of consumers. He wants them to hold the vendors accountable for unmaintainable products, and to demand a kind of longevity that used to be commonplace when computers were built from more standard and interchangeable parts. This has a lot of consequences that you can expand from (environmental impact, thrift, durability and suitability for purpose, etc.), and you can probably fit this into whatever philosophy you hope to live by without too much trouble.
From a software side, his focus on "data, sovereignty, privacy, and...rights" does suggest that he's making a sort of individualist argument here. He's trying to empower individuals to avoid dependency on companies that have proven themselves to be untrustworthy based on his dealings with them. The software he recommends runs on most hardware out there, and doesn't create unwanted dependency.
zaixfeep> Perhaps MeFi could offer a page where FLOSS/FOSS techies could offer their services...I think that this is more like what we had in the 90s. Unixes are multi-user operating systems, and it's possible to use one remotely and enjoy its services without having to be The Kind Of Person who can set up and host the services. Back then we all had to use the Unix shells, but these days a lot of web services are fine. We can return to this, with a new style.
I don't host mastodon, because wow is that ever a full-time job. I have a friend who runs our server, and it's just...us, a bunch of people who know one another and have broken bread together in the past, all thanking this person for their time and resources. I help moderate there, and host other things that our group uses, and we all just kind of share this "Check out what's running at my place!" vibe that used to be the way the Internet worked everywhere.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 9:48 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]
This existence of such a guide says that in a world of people shaking their fists at The Cloud, you can build the clouds that people want to see in the world.
The positivity is appreciated.
posted by otherchaz at 9:55 AM on February 3 [4 favorites]
The positivity is appreciated.
posted by otherchaz at 9:55 AM on February 3 [4 favorites]
What I like about this is it really does seem comprehensive. To be honest I skimmed it because, damn dude that's a lot, but I think if one were to start at the beginning and work through to the end they would have a thorough working knowledge of each component and how it works and fits together. So much of learning this stuff is finding a bunch of guides and lining them all up in the right order and not getting discouraged along the way.
Something that I only realized after doing this stuff for years is the on-going cost to doing things this way. With an off-the-shelf SaaS soluton, part of what you're paying for is maintenance. If you run your own home automation software, or media server, or whatever that maintenance is your problem. I have started to think about that in my life, i.e., what percentage of my week is being spent on keeping my house running, and how much is too much? Two percent? Five percent?
Finally, what I have found discouraging over the years is the bristling hostility that one sometimes encounters in the communities that form around these topics. Since much of this is contributor-driven, and the contributions are often voluntary, the subject matter expertise often exists only in a handful of people who don't necessarily have strong motivation to be a support person in addition to whatever else they're doing. And that's all fine and well.
What makes me scratch my head, though, are the people who hang out on a project's Github repo, or whatever, and slam others for asking questions. It seems like an odd way to spend your time. Maybe the answer is to separate the communication channels for the "advanced" users from the newly on-boarded folks or people with more common problems. A lot of the ire seems to stem from the "this question is asked a lot and you're dumb for asking it" sentiment. With all of that said, if I see one more "power user" chastising a person politely asking a question and linking them out to a "how to not ask dumb things" article I'm gonna start self-hosting my own Internet.
posted by mmcg at 10:01 AM on February 3 [5 favorites]
Something that I only realized after doing this stuff for years is the on-going cost to doing things this way. With an off-the-shelf SaaS soluton, part of what you're paying for is maintenance. If you run your own home automation software, or media server, or whatever that maintenance is your problem. I have started to think about that in my life, i.e., what percentage of my week is being spent on keeping my house running, and how much is too much? Two percent? Five percent?
Finally, what I have found discouraging over the years is the bristling hostility that one sometimes encounters in the communities that form around these topics. Since much of this is contributor-driven, and the contributions are often voluntary, the subject matter expertise often exists only in a handful of people who don't necessarily have strong motivation to be a support person in addition to whatever else they're doing. And that's all fine and well.
What makes me scratch my head, though, are the people who hang out on a project's Github repo, or whatever, and slam others for asking questions. It seems like an odd way to spend your time. Maybe the answer is to separate the communication channels for the "advanced" users from the newly on-boarded folks or people with more common problems. A lot of the ire seems to stem from the "this question is asked a lot and you're dumb for asking it" sentiment. With all of that said, if I see one more "power user" chastising a person politely asking a question and linking them out to a "how to not ask dumb things" article I'm gonna start self-hosting my own Internet.
posted by mmcg at 10:01 AM on February 3 [5 favorites]
RMS/ESR were noted simply to differentiate the nearly-identical acronyms, nothing more.
A lot of folks are upset that FLOSS doesn't work well as a business model; FLOSS was never meant to be a business model on its own. Some bristle at the seemingly socialist nature of the GPL and other FLOSS licences, so they use an OSS license, and they never hear a peep or get a patch or a $ from their major corporate users ever again. That's why others developed 'Open Core' software (where the core is FLOSS but doesn't meaningfully work without proprietary add-ons) and yet others write horrible/unusable doc on purpose (Buy our installation-consulting services/Use our managed service).
FUTO is, in concert with other like-minded individuals, Rossman's Inigo Montoya-like vendetta against the 'John Deere' philosophy of computer repair as well as NYC/NYS-like tax/regulation authorities. Additionally FUTO helps against the big guys efforts to do away with the general-purpose personal computer and sell only black-box appliances (like today's smartphones). Like it or not, consumer resistance to learning how to DIY computing feeds nicely into the black-box plan.
Resistance is FUTO ;-)
posted by zaixfeep at 10:45 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]
A lot of folks are upset that FLOSS doesn't work well as a business model; FLOSS was never meant to be a business model on its own. Some bristle at the seemingly socialist nature of the GPL and other FLOSS licences, so they use an OSS license, and they never hear a peep or get a patch or a $ from their major corporate users ever again. That's why others developed 'Open Core' software (where the core is FLOSS but doesn't meaningfully work without proprietary add-ons) and yet others write horrible/unusable doc on purpose (Buy our installation-consulting services/Use our managed service).
FUTO is, in concert with other like-minded individuals, Rossman's Inigo Montoya-like vendetta against the 'John Deere' philosophy of computer repair as well as NYC/NYS-like tax/regulation authorities. Additionally FUTO helps against the big guys efforts to do away with the general-purpose personal computer and sell only black-box appliances (like today's smartphones). Like it or not, consumer resistance to learning how to DIY computing feeds nicely into the black-box plan.
Resistance is FUTO ;-)
posted by zaixfeep at 10:45 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]
What makes me scratch my head, though, are the people who hang out on a project's Github repo, or whatever, and slam others for asking questions.
I refer you to MeFi's own "It's not my job to teach you {some progressive principle}." Arseholes gonna arsehole. Civility can be required, but genuine kindness can only be voluntarily given by the already empathetic.
posted by zaixfeep at 10:56 AM on February 3 [3 favorites]
I refer you to MeFi's own "It's not my job to teach you {some progressive principle}." Arseholes gonna arsehole. Civility can be required, but genuine kindness can only be voluntarily given by the already empathetic.
posted by zaixfeep at 10:56 AM on February 3 [3 favorites]
@zaixfeep, I'd like to know who deliberately writes bad documentation.
posted by zirconium_encrusted at 11:30 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]
posted by zirconium_encrusted at 11:30 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]
Gatekeepers: if you're too "stupid" to infer everything that they elide, then you aren't worthy of their Precious.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:55 AM on February 3
posted by wenestvedt at 11:55 AM on February 3
cntrl-f: October 25 => nothing
There's going to be a LOT of low-cost high-end used computers come next October (and ramping up to there) as Windows 10 goes out of support and the old computers can't install Win11.
Shame not to do something with them.
posted by aleph at 12:06 PM on February 3 [6 favorites]
There's going to be a LOT of low-cost high-end used computers come next October (and ramping up to there) as Windows 10 goes out of support and the old computers can't install Win11.
Shame not to do something with them.
posted by aleph at 12:06 PM on February 3 [6 favorites]
I'd like to know who deliberately writes bad documentation
I think it's not uncommon to deliberately decide not to allocate much time or money to documentation...
There's going to be a LOT of low-cost high-end used computers come next October (and ramping up to there) as Windows 10 goes out of support and the old computers can't install Win11.
Shame not to do something with them.
Judging from how it went with XP, there'll be even more computers just continuing to run 10 for years without security updates. Also a shame when for a lot of those users Linux would be fine to use and probably much less insecure.
Actually that's related to one of the topics covered in the video - setting up a software router that you can keep up to date with security patches, instead of relying on commercial routers that aren't usually supported for long.
posted by trig at 2:05 PM on February 3
I think it's not uncommon to deliberately decide not to allocate much time or money to documentation...
There's going to be a LOT of low-cost high-end used computers come next October (and ramping up to there) as Windows 10 goes out of support and the old computers can't install Win11.
Shame not to do something with them.
Judging from how it went with XP, there'll be even more computers just continuing to run 10 for years without security updates. Also a shame when for a lot of those users Linux would be fine to use and probably much less insecure.
Actually that's related to one of the topics covered in the video - setting up a software router that you can keep up to date with security patches, instead of relying on commercial routers that aren't usually supported for long.
posted by trig at 2:05 PM on February 3
"...continuing to run 10 for years without security updates."
Sure, but not in the (litigious) US. Not so much.
And not the high(er) end machines, they tend to get replaced when the security patches stop coming.
posted by aleph at 3:30 PM on February 3
Sure, but not in the (litigious) US. Not so much.
And not the high(er) end machines, they tend to get replaced when the security patches stop coming.
posted by aleph at 3:30 PM on February 3
My concern here is that Rossmann, whose videos I have often liked quite a bit, seems to be advocating for running your own email server on a residential Internet connection.
This will not go well. Either it will Just Not Work (like Rossmann alludes to in the documentation, but rather lightly) because of anti-spam blocking most major ISPs have in place, or because the major email providers like Google or Microsoft will not accept your mail. There's no recourse, no hackish solution, you just sort of lose your ability to send email to anyone on a major email provider because they don't trust some mail service on a residential connection with dynamic DNS to be anything but spam. This will happen at some point regardless of how well you set up your server.
I'm a big fan of Linux and GNU and FLOSS and run a Debian home server myself to minimize my exposure to corporate cloud services, but I would never, ever recommend that anyone (even someone technically proficient) run their own email server over a residential Internet connection. It seems like genuinely irresponsible advice.
posted by eschatfische at 3:48 PM on February 3 [5 favorites]
This will not go well. Either it will Just Not Work (like Rossmann alludes to in the documentation, but rather lightly) because of anti-spam blocking most major ISPs have in place, or because the major email providers like Google or Microsoft will not accept your mail. There's no recourse, no hackish solution, you just sort of lose your ability to send email to anyone on a major email provider because they don't trust some mail service on a residential connection with dynamic DNS to be anything but spam. This will happen at some point regardless of how well you set up your server.
I'm a big fan of Linux and GNU and FLOSS and run a Debian home server myself to minimize my exposure to corporate cloud services, but I would never, ever recommend that anyone (even someone technically proficient) run their own email server over a residential Internet connection. It seems like genuinely irresponsible advice.
posted by eschatfische at 3:48 PM on February 3 [5 favorites]
Eschatfische I'm going to go back and see what else Rossman says about diy email service; he sounds uncharacteristically naïve in this case. I concur with you about diy email — it's doable but not really worth the effort to constantly tinker, beg your isp and nag the big mx's... but with one caveat.
Services like Dynu offer trusted inbound SMTP store+forward and outbound SMTP relay so you could theoretically run a trusted home-baed email server but use their inbound/outbound ports.
In reality, though, Migadu, PurelyMail, SMTP2Go and many others can handle the entire mailserver function better and for less cost. AWS SES will also do just the outbound SMTP relay part fairly cheaply if one is bloody-minded about doing diy.
The folks crowing on the various diy email forums have either owned their email server's IP address for many years and kept up its good reputation, they are extraordinarily lucky, or like the guy who ran Tuffmail before its demise and the guy currently running Purelymail, keeping the pipes clean and connected is his 24x7x365 life.
posted by zaixfeep at 4:50 PM on February 3
Services like Dynu offer trusted inbound SMTP store+forward and outbound SMTP relay so you could theoretically run a trusted home-baed email server but use their inbound/outbound ports.
In reality, though, Migadu, PurelyMail, SMTP2Go and many others can handle the entire mailserver function better and for less cost. AWS SES will also do just the outbound SMTP relay part fairly cheaply if one is bloody-minded about doing diy.
The folks crowing on the various diy email forums have either owned their email server's IP address for many years and kept up its good reputation, they are extraordinarily lucky, or like the guy who ran Tuffmail before its demise and the guy currently running Purelymail, keeping the pipes clean and connected is his 24x7x365 life.
posted by zaixfeep at 4:50 PM on February 3
OK from LR's doc (emphasis mine)
posted by zaixfeep at 4:59 PM on February 3
For self-hosted email:So he and I are on the same page — hand off the mx trust to a vendor. Didn't know about postmarkapp.com before now, I'll check them out.
A domain name pointed to your server’s IP address that allows you to add TXT records, A records, etc.
An SMTP relay provider such as postmark
More patience than Rachel Cox waiting to leave Wind Cave or John McCain waiting to be rescued from prison in Vietnam
posted by zaixfeep at 4:59 PM on February 3
Judging from how it went with XP, there'll be even more computers just continuing to run 10 for years without security updates. Also a shame when for a lot of those users Linux would be fine to use and probably much less insecure.
It's possible to run some Windows 98-era machines productively with supersmall distros like Tiny or Puppy. (Youtube, Action Retro, 14 minutes) Memory is the big problem, since current-day web browsers demand so much RAM. And video tends to demand more power than those ancient devices can muster.
posted by JHarris at 7:45 PM on February 3 [1 favorite]
It's possible to run some Windows 98-era machines productively with supersmall distros like Tiny or Puppy. (Youtube, Action Retro, 14 minutes) Memory is the big problem, since current-day web browsers demand so much RAM. And video tends to demand more power than those ancient devices can muster.
posted by JHarris at 7:45 PM on February 3 [1 favorite]
Seems like a great time to make a bunch of internet appliances (routers,firewalls,etc), with spares, for cheap.
posted by aleph at 8:14 PM on February 3
posted by aleph at 8:14 PM on February 3
China will sell you them for cheaper and with way lower power consumption than any repurposed PC.
posted by flabdablet at 8:54 PM on February 3 [2 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 8:54 PM on February 3 [2 favorites]
Perhaps MeFi could offer a page where FLOSS/FOSS techies could offer their services (free or for pay) to those who would like to take advantage of the FUTO manifesto but do not want to become 13.5-hour hard-core techies themselves - a sort of Mechanical MeFiTurk?
I spent a lot of years working as an in-home PC fixit guy, and over those years I did manage to convince a few of my customers to give Linux a whirl. Some of those were exactly the kind of people that Lemkin referred to upthread - basically clueless about tech and using their machines almost exclusively for web browsing (mostly Facebook, truth to tell). As long as they could get on the Web and open a Word document, they were happy. That it was Linux under the hood where they'd formerly had Windows was essentially irrelevant to them.
I got a lot less repeat business from those customers than I did from those who preferred to stick with Windows. Not because I'd done anything to leave them unwilling to ask for my help, just because they had so much less frequent cause to ask for it. No malware infestations, no creeping slowdowns, less update-initiated weirdness. I felt pretty good about that.
But once I got around to retiring, the picture changed. Suddenly I was having to find other technicians with Linux skills to handball those people to, and because I live in a relatively sparsely populated rural area that's hard. So basically all of them are back to running Windows now, with the usual lack of support from the usual outlets.
I'll happily offer advice, guidance, and specific problem-solving help to anybody who runs into roadblocks while trying to shift their own digital life over to FLOSS and/or self-hosting, but not for pay and not for nothing. The people I'm positively motivated to support are those who are willing to get their hands a little greasy in order to acquire skills with which they could potentially assist others.
The free software ethos is not about building software per se so much as a community of practice; it's oriented toward paying help and support forward rather than treating it as transactional. You don't need a Coltrane level of software development mastery to get involved in it, just a willingness to learn and a desire to help for the sake of helping.
If you don't care to learn how the technology you rely upon actually works, and would rather simply pay other people to deal with all of that so that you don't have to, I'm absolutely not here to yell at you for Doing IT Wrong; I have pretty much exactly that attitude when it comes to maintaining my car. But if you find yourself frustrated by the ongoing enshittification of every commercial software and firmware offering to the point where you do feel motivated to learn enough to get by without them, please be reassured that hard-line libertarian fuckwits are not your only alternative recourse. Free software is completely compatible with socialism as well, and AskMe is right there.
posted by flabdablet at 11:14 PM on February 3 [6 favorites]
I spent a lot of years working as an in-home PC fixit guy, and over those years I did manage to convince a few of my customers to give Linux a whirl. Some of those were exactly the kind of people that Lemkin referred to upthread - basically clueless about tech and using their machines almost exclusively for web browsing (mostly Facebook, truth to tell). As long as they could get on the Web and open a Word document, they were happy. That it was Linux under the hood where they'd formerly had Windows was essentially irrelevant to them.
I got a lot less repeat business from those customers than I did from those who preferred to stick with Windows. Not because I'd done anything to leave them unwilling to ask for my help, just because they had so much less frequent cause to ask for it. No malware infestations, no creeping slowdowns, less update-initiated weirdness. I felt pretty good about that.
But once I got around to retiring, the picture changed. Suddenly I was having to find other technicians with Linux skills to handball those people to, and because I live in a relatively sparsely populated rural area that's hard. So basically all of them are back to running Windows now, with the usual lack of support from the usual outlets.
I'll happily offer advice, guidance, and specific problem-solving help to anybody who runs into roadblocks while trying to shift their own digital life over to FLOSS and/or self-hosting, but not for pay and not for nothing. The people I'm positively motivated to support are those who are willing to get their hands a little greasy in order to acquire skills with which they could potentially assist others.
The free software ethos is not about building software per se so much as a community of practice; it's oriented toward paying help and support forward rather than treating it as transactional. You don't need a Coltrane level of software development mastery to get involved in it, just a willingness to learn and a desire to help for the sake of helping.
If you don't care to learn how the technology you rely upon actually works, and would rather simply pay other people to deal with all of that so that you don't have to, I'm absolutely not here to yell at you for Doing IT Wrong; I have pretty much exactly that attitude when it comes to maintaining my car. But if you find yourself frustrated by the ongoing enshittification of every commercial software and firmware offering to the point where you do feel motivated to learn enough to get by without them, please be reassured that hard-line libertarian fuckwits are not your only alternative recourse. Free software is completely compatible with socialism as well, and AskMe is right there.
posted by flabdablet at 11:14 PM on February 3 [6 favorites]
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posted by AlbertCalavicci at 3:47 AM on February 3 [4 favorites]