[ale] A modest proposal for the times

[lollipopman691]

Well taken. For a look at what the 'average user' actually faces, I recommend Ed Zitron:

The whole essay is a fun read, but if you want to get to the meat of it skip to:

"I’ll give you a more direct example."

Given this level of enshittificattion, I'm not sure what the true right answer is.

- CHS

On Monday, April 7th, 2025 at 11:25 AM, Jon "maddog" Hall <jon.maddog.hall at gmail.com> wrote:

> lollipopman691,
>
>> Or just buy a Framework ( https://frame.work ) laptop Naked and install what you want on there. I've been very happy with mine.
>
> This is fine as far as it goes, but unless Framework increases their manufacturing and distribution chain dramatically you will still have 90% of the laptop and desktop users paying for an MS license needlessly.
>
> I am not a pollyanna on this. While I think a large number of people will still buy Microsoft, having Linux show up in retail stores already installed on the hardware might cause more people to be happy with it.
>
> Years ago President Lula, of Brazil, started a program to buy lots of inexpensive laptops at the end of their manufacturing cycle (where the channels were trying to get them out of the way so new models could be shown. Lula specified "no operating system" since they were going to install Linux.
>
> Microsoft found out about it and told Lula that he was "encouraging software piracy" since "75% of the people would pirate a copy of Windows and put that on their system." Microsoft wanted Lula to pay 34 USD to put the "International" edition of Windows on the laptop.
>
> This was a stupid solution because:
>
> o Anyone getting that laptop would immediately put a pirated version of full windows on it because the International version was so useless. That would force the piracy rate to 100%
>
> o The piracy rate of desktop software was 84% in Brazil at that time.
>
> o 25% of the people (by Microsoft's own admission) were perfectly happy with Linux
>
> o Therefore Linux reduced the piracy rate from 100% to 75%, beating the 84%
>
> If you saw the same acceptance rate in the world market then the usage rate of Linux would jump from 4% to 25% (or more). At that point many more applications would port, IMHO.
>
> md
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