I'd argue... Alpine?

Why? Well, because it's small. So Alpine isn't the programming distribution itself but rather the distribution for the container your run whatever you build inside of just because it's very VERY small (like... 5MB?!).

Obviously that makes sense only in some cases. For example for a frontend Web developer or a game developer (or a WebXR dev like me) it might not help much but otherwise,... maybe?

Anyway if you are into this kind of things check also Gitpod, it's about wrapping your dev environment inside a container then having it anytime, anywhere, including for other developers and facilitate their onboarding.

I haven't seriously read the article for now unfortunately (deadline tomorrow) but if there is one thing that I believe is reliable, it's computational complexity. It's one thing to be creative, ingenious, find new algorithms and build very efficient processors and datacenters to make things extremely efficient, letting us computer things increasingly complex. It's another though to "break" free of complexity. It's just, as far as we currently know, is impossible. What is counter intuitive is that seemingly "simple" behaviors scale terribly, in the sense that one can compute few iterations alone, or with a computer, or with a very powerful set of computers... or with every single existing computers... only to realize that the next iteration of that well understood problem would still NOT be solvable with every computer (even quantum ones) ever made or that could be made based on resources available in say our solar system.

So... yes, it is a "stretch", maybe even counter intuitive, to go as far as saying it is not and NEVER will be possible to realize AGI, but that's what their paper claims. It's a least interesting precisely because it goes against the trend we hear CONSTANTLY pretty much everywhere else.

I did more than 5 installs this weekend (for ... reasons) and the "trick" IMHO is ...

Do NOT install things ahead of actually needing them. (of course this assume things take minutes to install and thus you will have connectivity)

For me it meant Firefox was top of the list, VLC or Steam (thus NVIDIA driver) second, vim as I had to edit crontab, etc.

Quite a few are important to me but NOT urgent, e.g Cura (for 3D printer) and OpenSCAD (for parametric design) or Blender. So I didn't event install them yet.

So IMHO as other suggested docker/docker-compose but only for backend.

Now... if you really want a reproducible desktop install : NixOS. You declare your setup rather than apt install -y and "hope" it will work out. Honestly I was tempted but as install a fresh Debian takes me 1h and I do it maybe once a year, at most, no need for me (yet).

I keep track of parts of such a solution at https://fabien.benetou.fr/Content/SelfHostingArtificialIntelligence namely TTS, STT, LLM, etc. There is also a recent HomeAssistant article https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/06/07/ai-agents-for-the-smart-home/ which is quite interesting... but also concludes that they don't believe it's ready for prime time for most.

If you have specific use cases in mind, happy to give more pointers for solutions I believe might fit. That being said I'm not personally convinced as I don't use any assistant on a daily basis. Still I believe FLOSS alternatives are interesting to consider for any topic.

Some of the new features most people aren't aware of us that I used recently :

• WebXR, make a Web page immersive and work in the browser of VR/AR headsets, e.g Meta Quest, Lynx XR1, Apple Vision Pro, etc
• WebBlueTooth, connect to a BT device, e.g a Lego controller in order to move actuator, data from sensors, etc
• WebUSB, connect a device and update its firmware, e.g SmartWatch, mechanical keyboard, etc
• GamePad API, use a gamepad or joystick to play from a browser window
• Realms in JavaScript for "better" sandboxing, it's a relatively new feature of the language so the engine must be updated

So... sure none of that really helps to read a 2D Web page (like this one on Lemmy) but they pretty much all help to achieve better cross-platform support. By using the Web rather than native to connect to hardware then it is instantly delivered without having any OS specific driver to build and install. Practically speaking it does make the browser increasingly complex but IMHO it is worth it.

PS: I probably also used some modern CSS so there also the engine (which is ridiculously complex by the way) has to be updated too.

A map, like a printed map that most touristic office give away for free? Same for public transport?

IMHO the question isn't as much you as a user of such platforms is "f*cked" because you sound both mindful and technically savvy. So, on that front, you will be OK.

The harder question I would say is how morally bankrupt you will feel by contributing to worsening the privacy of others for profit. Namely that yes by using Facebook/Insta/TikTok/etc you will gain more customers but those customers are gradually losing their privacy while you make those companies bigger by paying them. That means you depend on those companies more while they get more power.

Because of that I would argue that sure, do everything you can to protect yourself but it can't stop there. I would argue then than the question is rather, where else can you find more clients, and maybe even "better" clients who are more aligned with your own views on privacy, and maybe even more. It's definitely a challenge, especially seeing the trend of surveillance capitalism, but as you acknowledge yourself by using Lemmy, there are actual alternatives.

Gaming? Fair point.

Unless it's for games that use shitty anticheat solutions probably not a good reason anymore due to the SteamDeck, a LOT of games do work and it's possible to check before hand via ProtonDB.

So it was a fair point 5 years ago, now most AAA games, including VR games, do work without tinkering.

I never thought I'd say this but... in your case, for work at least I would actually stick to Windows! It looks like most of your tools are from Microsoft and that the environment they will normally run on is Windows. It seems most pragmatic to stay there.

For gaming though (as I've argue few times and can be seen from my history), Proton works well, even for AAA games, unsupported (officially) games and VR. ProtonDB helps you to quickly assess if that's the case for your specific games.

Anyway, what I would suggest though is step back, i.e WHY do you want to step away from Windows. If it's technical then "just" dual boot and properly separating fun from work might be sufficient. If it's more moral and ethical, then earning money from tools that are NOT from Microsoft to gradually decouple, remove the dependency on it, seems like the "right" thing to do.

You don’t know what a “monopoly” is.

Do you though? A clarification that most people miss : "In economics, a monopoly is a single seller. In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with a decrease in social surplus." (from Wikipedia) So are you 100% sure that the author was talking from an economical rather than legal viewpoint?

So sure, in theoretical economics GitHub is not a monopoly, rather it's part of an oligopoly. Yet, in law, it is in practice a monopoly. GitHub is so big that it does shape the market of collaborating on (open-source) software, even though alternatives do exist.

FWIW I'm using the reMarkable 2. It runs Linux and pretty fast eInk for sketching and writing notes. It's not paper but closest to it I tried so far.

PeerTube to serve my content and yt-dlp or youtube-local to watch.