Alright, so
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As you may have gathered from some of the posting that Sundog and I have been doing over the last few days, we're kicking the tires on some tech stuff.
Toy production is still ongoing, we're getting ready to order more molds, I met with one of our 3D modelers yesterday about the next models we'll be working up.
You can get Kumiai-Ki, The Mighty Labor Union Mech action figures from @MountainTownToys right now!
But we've solved a bunch of toy production problems, and half solved a couple of others, and a byproduct of that is that we have some extra cycles while we're waiting on parts and tooling to finish solving problems and start making the next batch of toys.
And that means we've been working on some tech stuff.
For me, this mostly means that I've been dusting off old ideas and checking out new projects and checking in on old projects.
I've been writing a lot, about technology, about what I want, about culture, about the ways technology has failed.
Some of these things might eventually become blog posts or a newsletter or a zine.
But mostly, I've been thinking, and trying to fight back in small ways to find or build a new foundation as the forces of capital erode the ground from underneath my feet, technologically speaking.
@ajroach42 So you know: those posts aren't going unnoticed, at least by me. I'm delighted you've had the bandwidth to share them with us, and your approach to wanting back what made "retro" computing useful without falling into unthinking fandom has really helped my response to the same feeling of erosion.
I have, for decades, considered Debian the bedrock of my computer infrastructure.
The thing that I could trust, because it was run by an organization so obsessed with the ideology of software freedom that it routinely rendered itself significantly more cumbersome as a result.
I was there for the IceWeasel campaign! I thought those principles were central to the project.
I was wrong.
So one of the many things I'm trying to do, as I reorient myself in the computer world without Debian as a foundation to build on, is looking for a new operating system.
The Linux kernel project accepts slop contributions, the debian project accepts slop contributions. Where does that leave me?
Put simply, I'm looking for a daily driver operating system that I can trust to be made by people, and not contain the product of an automated plagiarism machine.
@ajroach42 OS selection is a hard one, especially once "Intel (compatibles)" is not taken for granted anymore.
That basically leaves Linux (supported by everybody, to some degree, a lot of that in branches that really need an uplift to something current) and NetBSD (less wide coverage, but more focus on keeping things running in a single code base instead of the "every vendor makes their own mess", although that's by "virtue" of fewer vendors actively supporting it, instead of hardware being supported by hobbyist efforts.)
Everything else is rather aspirational in terms of platform support, sadly.
@ajroach42 I'm currently eyeing RedoxOS (strong anti-AI policy), and NetBSD (less strong anti-AI policy1). I've liked microkernels ever since I first played with the HURD, and I like Rust, so RedoxOS is very interesting.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to install it in a VM yet, so that's not an option right now. But something to keep an eye on.
NetBSD on the other hand, works fine so far, and as far as server-side things go, I haven't missed anything yet. Apart from a declarative configuration a'la NixOS, but... that's missing from anything but NixOS & Guix.
NetBSD's policy is that tainted code is banned, except if core gives an OK. They have not done that, and NetBSD has been pretty consistently going their own way, so I have some hope in them not going slop before the bubble bursts (and there'll be no point after). ↩︎
(No, I'm not interested in arguing about the merits of AI, or hearing about how your use case is justified or okay or whatever.
I am opposed to generative AI and LLMs on several levels, but
I don't care what you do personally, and I'm not here to police your decisions.
I don't want AI generated code in my OS, and I don't want to talk about it.)
The most complete OSes I've found so far that currently have bans on direct LLM contributions are either https://www.haiku-os.org/ or https://www.redox-os.org/
Guix got closer to a ban than Debian but also failed.
I think technically and license wise https://ironclad-os.org/ is interesting (and has an AI ban), though they don't seem to be anywhere near as complete as haiku or redox.
I wish the pro AI Debian developers would hear about how much end users hate the results of the LLM vote.
And I really wish the GNU project would make up it's mind before trusting emacs, guile, or hurd for the future.
Of course, all of this is made all the more complicated by the fact that, along side most major software projects allowing AI code contributions, a bunch of software projects are ever more obviously being operated by Nazis.
And I don't want bigots writing my code either.
So I'm exploring.
I didn't think I would need to find an operating system that wasn't Debian or a Debian derivative, so I haven't really paid attention to the larger OS world.
From what I can see, the operating systems that have taken the most strong stance against the kinds of generative AI utilization that I'm concerned about here are NetBSD, FreeDOS, and ... illumos (or at least some Illumos distributions such as Tribblix)
I've also seen some general "we don't want AI here" conversation from Haiku.
@ajroach42 I've been poking at this too. No idea how functional it is, but I believe that Redox might also be anti-AI and anti-Nazi. I think there's some public statements suggesting that's not the case by some project contributors, and a fairly sternly worded response from the project originator, but I'm not sure how firm it is in the community at large. Might be worth a look (I am considering a VM). I believe Haiku is also in a similar camp.
It's a frustrating pickle.
But hardware support among these alternative operating systems is inconsistent (with NetBSD sitting at the top of the pile, but well under Linux and Windows.)
And, as with all things, there are degrees to all this. I recognize that I will probably end up having to make compromises in some of the things that I use in order to continue to do much of the work that I want to do.
In much the same way that I begrudgingly keep a windows 10 box around so that I can interface with some windows only hardware, I will allow Linux on devices that support Linux, or for activities that I can't perform in other environments unless/until I can afford to replace them.
But, if I'm going to be exploring alternative OSs and reexamining the foundational layer of how I approach computing, I might as well question it all.
I am looking at new ways of doing things, and new software, and new ideas about how software should work, and new ideas about what is *good* about the software community, up and down the stack.
I'm not just questioning my OS, I'm questioning everything about modern computers (and not for the first time! I was already banging this drum nearly a decade ago https://ajroach42.com/observations-on-modern-computing-the-last-10-years-were-a-misstep/ )
So yes, I'm going to set up a NetBSD laptop and a NetBSD server and start figuring out how much of my core life I can move onto them.
I'm going to migrate things off of my yunohost server and into the NetBSD server. I'm going to try to use Linux only when I don't have another choice.
I think these things are pretty obviously values aligned with the position that I've taken.
But I'm also going to start doing some other things.
@ajroach42 Well that's 2 people in almost as many minutes mentioning NetBSD on a laptop. I'll be interested to hear how your journey goes, if you wouldn't mind sharing.
This bit might get a little controversial, and I want to make sure that I say what I mean to say, and that means I'm going to take my time to write it.
I haven't stopped, I'm just being careful.
Alright, I also made a sandwich and grabbed some chips. I should be slightly more able to speak correctly.
Everything that's happening in computers today is evidence to me that the free software movement failed.
@ajroach42 yeah 100%. I think it goes to show that property rights over information is only enforceable retroactively due to the fact that there’s literally no difference between transmitting and copying and that’s a big tube of toothpaste to not be able to get back into.
We relied on property law that was designed to protect people with more property. It’s all a lot of words on paper when your code is used to hurt people.
Or, at least, depending on which vision you have in your head of Free Software, it has either entirely failed as a movement, or it has ended up where it was always headed.
It’s amazing to me how we’re watching the tech world fall apart at the feet of monetization, enshitifiction, AI, and whatever other Bullshit trend they’re chasing this week.
The world we're living in, where privacy disappears more each day and everything gets worse, is basically the consequences that the Free Software folks have been warning about and talking about for decades!
But, by and large, the tools that are being used to implement these consequences *are* so called "Free" software.
@ajroach42 Let's start by making stuff "offline" again. But: I'd rather keep some connection to you and follow your exploits from a distance 🤔
@ajroach42 Well, the amount of money that got waved around is astronomical, it's inevitable that people bent the knee.
@ajroach42 Like a sudden torrential rain in the desert, the landscape is washed away.
