Quite some years ago we switched from git to Mercurial and the amount of VSC mentoring and unfucking the "VCS guys" had do became almost zero. People seriously just got it. Some argued that is was because they had to learn with git, but... since then we've made the switch back to git for other reasons and we've back at wrangling with the tool again. I'd much much rather use Mercurial with Evolve extension - that is really good.
I agree with what you say. The difference is that you consider a provider your adversary when it comes to the task of that control and I consider a GDPR-respecting company to be my partner in that attempt (yes, I know who Snowden is) to control [what kind of things about yourself you would like to expose].
Per-app VPNs have existed for some time, and their use case is different from system-wide VPNs. Typically, per-app VPNs are used when you want to grant specific applications access to resources on say a corporate VPN, without granting all applications access to the VPN. Per-app VPNs are also useful if you want to protect a specific app's communications through an encrypted tunnel without affecting the rest of the system.
Maybe the Dutch website is different but I think it is one of the worst webshops I've been on. When you search for a product you end up in a flood of pages with half related products. No filters, nothing. So I never find what I am looking for and just leave.
Now I don't think Amazon is stupid so there must be a reason for this experience.
Some things changed for the good the last couple of years.
I am programming on Ubuntu (C#, PHP, Javascript) with Jetbrains software. This works absolutely great.
For 3D work I use Blender.
But for graphical work I agree that there are still alternatives missing.
Figma is a very good alternative for Sketch. Scribus is a good alternative for Indesign. Krita is very good for concept art. But that's about it.
Inscape is a good alternative for Illustrator, but only if you work in RGB.
Gimp can do what Photoshop can but it will take you 3 times as long.
But for me the trade-offs work. I want to own my computer so I choose to work in Gimp instead of Photoshop. I also started to design websites directly with CSS. And I switched from 3DsMax to Blender (which isn't a trade-off anymore).
It's like 75% as good as Photoshop, which is pretty amazing for a JS app. I've found things like quality of masking refinement tools— an absolute must in my workflows— to be lacking.
I think Blender and Figma are good, professional tools. For the rest of them, I'm sure they work fine if you don't need to produce extremely polished stuff at volume— but they're not even close to good for that use case. (which is what my comment was about) I could see a UX Designer who works primarily in wireframes and such things getting by fine with linux, but not someone who works primarily in visuals.
As you can read in my comment I agree with you. For example working with text in Gimp is just horrible. And Inkscape is very good untill you need it for CMYK.
But this thread is about owning your PC. And then I think all those trade-offs can be overcome. Sometimes this means thinking in other directions. For example the choice to design in CSS instead of Photoshop.
I don't think you can say: 'I cannot get away from Apple'.
But you can say: 'I choose to stay at Apple because I think it is more convenient'.
I have tried in 2008 with Ubuntu Studio, after spilling coffee on my Powerbook G4, to work in Linux as a UI designer full time and people don't realised the power of Inkscape at the time. 2017 I have used only Ubuntu LTS with Gnome and Affinity Designer in Win VM, full year.
This time around I think that is possible, and economically solid, the move from Apple to ARM and closed walls of App Store to create conditions for real Linux Desktop Revolution.
Yeah, Inkscape is great. Maybe Linux works for working exclusively with on-screen assets? Not there if you do a lot of print work/layout. It's not that there aren't any tools for it, it's just that the tools aren't even close to as smooth or productive.
For bamboo you see the fast part, but not the slow part. The shoots are prepared over a number of months where all the nodes are made underground. Then when it is ready the space between the nodes is added causing the very fast telescoping action.
I love my empress tree! Once the roots were established the thing grows beautifully.
It blew over this year (3 years worth of growth). Several of the shoots also blew over. Finally one shoot survived the harsh winds we get occasionally and it’s already ~7-8 feet tall.
and the leaves. They look like something from Jurassic park. They’re HUGE!
I really wanted to use Sailfish as Android alternative. But after reading reviews I think it is just not ready and will not be an alternative to Android and iOS any time soon. There are just too many bugs.
Linux for mobile is also not an alternative. Since there are so many apps missing it can't be compared with Android and iOS. Well at least for me this includes some banking apps that make my life just so much easier.
The only real options right now are the Android forks like LineageOS I think.
I still miss Mercurial. Unfortunately most people moved to Git so I also moved to it.