I think a lot of people feel powerless when going against such big entities. I get this. But I think it is important to remind everyone that you don't need to do everything at once.
Our job often involves breaking down big problems into many little problems. So it should be clear that making little steps makes progress towards solving the big problems. It can be easy to feel like that progress isn't happening and it can be frustrating that it isn't happening fast enough. But our experience should also tell us that it all seems to quickly come together towards the end. There was never a magic leap, it was all the small steps put together.
Linux advocacy often reminds me of a favourite quote from Margaret Mead:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
I think it’s very promising, if you believe in the potential of Linux on the desktop, that gaming used to be the standard “Linux doesn’t do what I need, so I stay on Windows” argument. Thanks to a lot of investment and hard work, particularly by Valve and others contributing to software like Wine/Proton, that is no longer the case. Many games work fine on Linux today, even among the big names. Some even have native versions. It mostly seems to be “anti-cheat” measures that are statistically indistinguishable from malware that still cause trouble.
Another potential sticking point for adoption by home users today is that few, if any, of the big streaming services work well on Linux. This also seems to come down at least partly to DRM. A cynic might suggest that this is because Linux will give a more appropriate response if a copy protection system tries to do invasive things that it has no business doing on someone else’s computer. In any case, it’s another significant barrier, but if we could get to the point where you could at least watch HD content like users of other platforms when you’re paying the same subscription fees, it’s another barrier that could fall.
This latter example is, of course, more than a little ironic given the subject of today’s discussion. But then the behaviour that the DRM system is being subverted to protect against by Signal probably wouldn’t fly for more than five minutes on Linux in the first place, so I don’t think Linux not enabling intrusive/abusive DRM is really the problem here…
I agree. I think the problem is it is easier to see the distance we still need to go than the distance we've already covered. It is good to reflect and look back, seeing how far we've come. It's the best thing to motivate continued efforts forward.
> It mostly seems to be “anti-cheat” measures that are statistically indistinguishable from malware that still cause trouble.
This seems to be a big hitch. But we also know that studios will drop these methods (hopefully in favor of ones that actually work without being incredibly invasive) if the userbase pushes back. They can only make these moves because people don't care. Or they care only as far as their mouth, but not to their wallet. Certainly there is addiction here, and that should be accounted for, but it does still warrant push. That's only sufficient as an explanation, rather than an excuse.
Our job often involves breaking down big problems into many little problems. So it should be clear that making little steps makes progress towards solving the big problems. It can be easy to feel like that progress isn't happening and it can be frustrating that it isn't happening fast enough. But our experience should also tell us that it all seems to quickly come together towards the end. There was never a magic leap, it was all the small steps put together.