Live Free With Linux

The personal computer market of today is dominated by two vile conglomerates which control what films you watch, what music you hear and what software you use. I refer, of course, to Mackintosh and Windows. They reduce their users to a pernicious form of serfdom through several methods. App subscriptions bleed users dry. Updates are frequently mandatory, in many cases making older files unusable. Any who dare challenge their dominance with better ideas are bought out, and in some cases their ideas are destroyed with crippling patents.

Most computers are filled with all manner of tracking software which monitors your buying habits, reading material, and other entertainment. Several years back, I discovered that Google had drawn an all too accurate picture of my situation in life and ideas. The deliberate alteration of downloaded content, especially in the case of e-readers, happens far more commonly than most people realize. There was a particularly notorious case of such alteration involving the works of Roald Dahl approximately two years ago. The near-monopolies held by today’s computing corporations are indeed little different from the Mercantilist grip of the East India company at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War.

As Colonial Americans made do without tea, we can do without the products of the great software firms. Linux is the most efficient way to do this. Many of the most common Linux distributions come pre-loaded with analogs of Word, Power Point, and Excel, which you own free and clear. There is also a cornucopia of mathematical and scientific software available. Alternatives to almost all such software as MATLAB and Autocad exist, and much of it is compatible with the Python programming language. Unlike Windows, the Linux operating system is practically impervious to the most common security threats, and rarely requires expensive anti-virus software.

Therefore, anyone seeking to escape the managerial system should install Linux. However, the battle for software independence is only one half of the war. At present, the state of independent hardware is woefully inadequate. Linux-based phones such as the Pine phone eke out a meager existence at the margins of the market. There is then an excellent opportunity to found a new company that makes truly open-source cell and flip phones, freed from the dictates of app stores. Open source codebases have also been robbed of their autonomy by donations from the likes of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. It is telling that the technology corporations themselves are dependent on open-source software. There are at least two solutions to this problem. The first is to simply found new open-source communities which refuse such donations. Another option is to infiltrate existing ones, when, upon reaching a majority, the infiltrating programmers vote to reject donor money.

In conclusion, Linux is the best tool with which to counter digital involution. Its infinitely adaptable nature lends itself readily to the creation of new machines. It is possible to run the Linux operating system on a single-board computer, the Raspberry Pi, for less than one hundred dollars. The widespread development of novel machines running the Linux operating system is indeed a necessary precursor to the next Heroic Age of Invention. A Linux economy would be one devoid of the financial incentives which have damaged our civilization so grievously. The waste of our brightest minds on the development of next years ‘features’ would be no more. As no one owns the meter, the kilogram or the alphabet today, word processors, databases, and other structural components of the Internet Age would be standards in this new world, and nothing more. Independent businessmen would no longer be beholden to faceless corporate behemoths for such fundamental tasks as keeping books. The lack of change in computing systems would make files from even centuries past readable. Therefore, try Linux today.

What would they do?