We will win the war for general-purpose computing

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I'm not so hopeful. To have some guarantee of rights and freedoms today, some sacrifice in convenience is needed. Most people I know who can understand what is at play are not willing so sacrifice even a bit of convenience.

The purpose-specific computing is more profitable right now. If we make general-purpose computing more attractive, then we may have a chance. But even then, compatibility maybe difficult.

What bothers me is the idea that we can only have one type of computing--that for general-purpose computing to exist, we have to kill off every other kind of computing.

This is not a zero-sum game. We can have console-style computers and general purpose computers, and they can both exist simultaneously without one having to win and the other having to lose.

I can see the day coming when few people will have general-purpose computers. Those will be the people who make things, and also have a good set of tools and maybe a milling machine.

This has already happened with phones and tablets, after all. And Chromebooks. And Windows 365. And Windows S. And locked-down enterprise machines.

Spot on.

I spend 3-5 years getting the perfect PC setup only to have it knocked down again every time I get a new PC and all the settings have moved, half the programs that used to work now either wont or has a replacement that's not quite what I want.

I am not against progress but I just need to work so I now specifically keep the last two generations of my PC offline just so I can compile a clients firmware or modify a PCB with the same environment I developed it on. The next generations of development environments are going on-line so it may not be an option for me.

At one point I designed complex communications systems from ISO layer 1 to layer 7 but these days I dont have a clue how to use the top layers, they change daily and I the guy in the IT dept to fix any issues with my smart phone or connecting to a clients network so I feel everyones pain.

I do my part by using FOSS. My only sin is using Windows at work because it's what the Engineers use.

My cellphone OS and web browser are FOSS.

My personal and side project server is FOSS.

I even used GIMP for 10+ years before finally giving adobe 10$ so I could knock out a flyer real quick.

I think we all know who the devil in the room is. FOSS fans know who the sinners are.

My biggest fear isn't technical, it's cultural. Computing doesn't feel like it's winning hearts & minds. Computing gets further & further away, less and less personal, less intelligible, more mystical every year. We accept more magic into our lives, & the sense of engagement, the sense of ownership, the idea of personal computing feels like it's fading.

I'm techno-optimist, but there's going to be such a huge lag between the wins we start to make, the re-free-ing up of computing, & any significance or adoption. We need to re-liberate computing, make the technical victories, before we can even begin to fight the real general-purpose computing war. The dream of computing needs to be re-kindled.