The Incels of Computing: The Depressive Defense Mechanisms of Free Software
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Sorry forgot to record a not ai proof lol
In the 21th century living without technology is becoming impossible. More and more of our lives are dependent on various digital means, from the internet, to computers, to the telephones people carry in their pockets. You can try to resist this, by not carrying around a cellphone, or by not being connected to the internet. But it is becoming less and less of an option. Especially if you want enjoy your life.
So instead of rebelling technology as a whole, various groups are trying to insure that the technology itself is respectful and nice, trying to insure that you and I will have all of our human rights present with the technology we are using too. That our privacy is respected by our computers. That we can exercise our freedom of speech on the internet. That we have freedom.
Yet with all the progress that has been done with liberating the digital space there is a sense of self defeating, depression. A kind of defense mechanism of sorts. As if the people settled for something and gave up trying to do anything else. Which in itself causing lack of morale, lack of vision, and with it lack of actual movement.
Some express a similar feeling I'm trying to express here, by criticizing, say, The Free Software Foundation for lacking a YouTube channel. ( While they have something better. ) But I think I could perhaps articulate this feeling I have about the Free Software Movement better, by pointing you at a comment on one of my articles. Which was sent by a person who's nickname I cannot pronounce and which argues against a part I wrote in the article, which says:
Most GNU/Linux users have extremely under-powered machines that barely run.
To which the user replies:
Most of such users have an incredibly powerful machines, clocked at billions of Hz, with billions of bytes of RAM, it's just that software expands to use all resources.
... and then to a different part in the article, which is about how I think the computers of SuperTuxKart players are not good, the user says this:
Supertuxkart is extremely resource intensive, but is at least playable on GNUbooted thinkpads at low settings.
On extremely fast cards like the 780 Ti, supertuxkart does run quite well (nouveau reclocking is still quite limited, but the developers has gone and fixed most pipeline stalls for that game).
The same is true for Xonotic, but sadly not minetest or xmoto.
Do you see what I mean? Do you see the self defeating depression in this statement?
Okay let me explain, for those of you who are not getting what I am pointing at.
Nvidia 780 Ti was a rather powerful GPU from 12 years ago, released in 2013, or something, and which, at that time, could produce some rather good graphics. Today we already have the 5080 ti, which is a behemoth compared to that card from 2013. Yet if you want to run 100% Free Software, buying a new card like the 5080 is a waste of money. It requires proprietary drivers, proprietary firmware and probably runs proprietary software itself. Which is technically maybe at some point in time will be possible to replace with Free Software, but not yet.
The Nvidia driver for Free Software users Nouveau is lacking in development. The developers of this driver need to reverse engineer the cards ( which lack proper documentation from the manufacturers ) to make software that can replace the proprietary driver the card comes with. And apparently one of the newest cards that is currently somewhat supported, far from perfectly, is a card from 12 years ago.
The situation is a bit better with AMD, since at least the driver part is Free Software, but it still requires proprietary firmware that comes in a form of binary blobs in the Linux-Kernel. And the card, on the Free Software driver is not even fully operational.
I have an AMD card that should be able to render images for me in Cycles, but the driver that I have doesn't have that functionality. So I'm stuck with only the basic use of the card, which is to see graphics on the screen.
In fact most modern tech is so riddled with all kinds of bullshit restrictions and various Freedom problems, that a lot of Free Software users do not even touch anything modern. Richard Stallman, a very prominent figure in the movement has a Thinkpad x200 computer from before 2010. Because it can have all it's user-changeable components, from BIOS, through the system to the application he is running, be all 100% Free Software.
In a way, it seems like the corporations are literally defeating us. They made it so hard for us to fight their nonsense, so hard to reverse engineer their hardware, that most of us gave up. Sitting on 15 - 20 year old machines and pretending to be okay with it.
It is not okay! It is a defense mechanism! We are lying to ourselves that we don't want good computers, because getting good computers requires, what we believe, an insane amount of effort. We are becoming the incels of computing. We are telling everyone that we are okay with not having anything exciting, and we are starting to believe in it ourselves.
Yes, there are users like Tobias Platen who bough a fucking Tallos II ( a computer on a PowerPC architecture with an insanely powerful CPU that doesn't even need a GPU most of the time ) to play games on it. Legend! Where are the others?
I'm making Dani's Race to be this ultra graphical, open world game for a reason. I want Free Software to be exciting. I want computing Freedom to be sexy. I want people that play PlayStation 5 all day long consider trying Free Software. This cannot be done with decade old hardware. I'm competing here with insanely power-hungry, yet insanely eye catching games. If I fail to make Dani's Race look like something comparable to them, I fail to even make those people look my way. So then what is the point?
When I make a fully Free Software GTA clone on a very demanding engine, making the game require newer hardware. I'm trying to wake the movement up! To shake the defense mechanisms off! To make us fight for freedom again!
Not to settle down on some prehistoric, fossilized computers, but crank up the heat and get Nouveau working on modern cards. Make it so one could have a computer from 2025 with the newest components and have it run Libreboot and Linux-Libre. And make it so it will be at least as good, if not better, in terms of performance than to use the garbage proprietary software.
Yes, along the way, I'm trying to figure how to make a sustainable business with Free Software, and develop all whats needed for this model to be replicated by the entire movement. If we can fund ourselves ourselves, we can outgrow the competition. Hell look at one of the best Free Software projects today: Blender, that is growing at such speed that Autodesk doesn't have a chance. Yes Blender started late. But it has nitro. And according to Blender it is only from 2% of the users donating. Imagine if projects could control how much they earn?
There should be a vision, a vision of the future, a good future, to start moving towards it. I see mine. A future where there is no proprietary, because it is not needed. Because nobody buys into the excuses, people today buy into, when signing up restrictive EULAs. A future where people can collaborate and create freely, without a need for permission, or a license. A future where Free Software users are everybody. And yet everybody has the latest and greatest experiences when in comes to their computers. A future where Free Software games are mindbogglingly amazing. A future where people are tech-literate. Where people buy books with source code and read them for the beauty of the text, like one would today with works of Charles Dickens. A future where people have freedom.
You know, if you aim farther than you can reach. At least you will reach your personal limit. Imagine if we all join up and try to reach far...
Happy Hacking!!!
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