It's been done before. ChromeBooks comes to mind, but there have been others. Usually winds up killing the outfit that tries it.
As far as I know Chromebooks only survive because of the educational market. Locked down devices are preferable in schools.
I won't buy one, but I could see such systems becoming dominant in another 20 years or so.
This is what happened when we allowed companies with a profit incentive to code our devices. Linux will always be free, and there will be companies that design computers for Linux, such as Fairphone, Framework, Furi, Fedora, and probably some that don't start with F too
It's called secure boot and it's been around for over 10 years now.
And the first iteration was much more locked down, only got changed after public complaints.
This isn't quite the same thing. I'd say locked bootloaders are the Android analog, and they are already less likely to be user unlockable than the typical PC (and the situation is getting worse).
It will creep in slowly since most people dont touch any settings on their computer after the initial unboxing and setup.
Big box retailers will offer discounts on them, much like how you can buy a Chromebook for very little.
Enticed by cheap computers, people will buy not knowing that any limitations exist. They'll be encouraged to use centralized app repositories but they can still install some other stuff.
A year or two later, some things won't be permitted, computer will make scary warnings when installing, but with enough clicking, you can get past. Until the day you can't.
It will be a progression, but it will happen eventually. I honestly am surprised that computers dont require some sort of registration. I'm sure that will happen eventually.
I wonder if PCs are getting fast enough to do everything that the opposite can happen. Older hardware and free software is as good or better than proprietary with new software. So, even with subsidy, they can't turn the screw. The problem with mobile is the lack of a competitor, and the duopoly.
Even Microsoft could not break it. If Linux mobile can port over all android apps seamlessly or easily for devs, with lower fees, then it has a chance. Microsoft paid devs to put their apps on the windows mobile store but even that wasn't enough.
Similar to windows, the more they turn the screws, the more people want to leave. There is a boiled frog effect but eventually lots of the frogs die in that analogy, turning off the cash spigot.
Windows does require registration to any normal user at this point. Gotta setup a micrisper account
It's not required, it just seems required to non-technical people (I know, potato/potato, it's effectively required).
Such pcs already exist and are used by buinesses and schools all over... Mostly chromebooks and i suppose apple also fits that criteria.
But it would be very hard to stop a determined hacker who has physical access to a device and doesnt mind voiding any warranties or user agreements.
Most Chromebooks can have other operating systems. Many have a bypass, mine needed to have the battery disconnected from the motherboard while installing the os, then you could connect it back and be done.
yes most chromebooks if you own them you do what you want because google knows even if they did lock them down more someone out there would be waiting with a soldering iron to figure out how to mod them into running other things. But thats not the same thing as a company that buys devices for their employees and doesnt give said employees permission to open them (without risking their job anyway). The point being, the "demand" for such systems is already mostly met, normal PC users/ gamers wouldnt actually buy a product like that, because if they did it would just be a "Console". You couldnt force it on users because there isn't a monopoly of PCs like there is with phones or game consoles
Actually I should have said in my original post, Game Consoles also qualify, because the PS4/5 Xbox whatever, the last 2 generations they're literally just locked down PCs with very specific hardware.
Microsoft is already starting to lay the groundwork with their CPU, SecureBoot, and TPM 2.0 requirements.
Apple has been doing this for a long time, though there are ways to get around it on MacOS, for now.
On PC, the answer is Linux. For mobile devices, things are looking more bleak.
Linux won't be an option if the boot loader is locked. I think Linux is just about popular enough that options should remain but they might become reduced unless it becomes more popular than it currently is.
I'd imagine not every mobo manufacturer will play ball with whoever mandates a locked bootloader.
Right now, we have google and apple with a duopoly on mobile devices.
The grand majority of all laptops and desktop devices are using motherboards manufactured specifically for those devices (or device series). It's not much of a stretch to imagine them adding restrictions to their already mature supply chain.
Sure, but there's Tuxedo Computers, Framework, the PopOS guys selling PCs and many more. Those won't go away.
Linux is heavily used on servers. Losing server sector means a huge chunk of revenue.
Linux is servers.
Hell, VMware migrated to a Linux base a while back, and with their new exorbitant pricing, large environments are switching to things like Proxmox.
The next ten years, VMware will be second string virtualization, even in data centers.
I'm not sure what's going to happen, but there was a "BIOS War" in the 80's,when IBM wouldn't release their BIOS code, so other devs reverse engineered it. No reason why that couldn't happen again.
Next phone I get I'll get fairphone and check the market for an alternative OS at that time. This might be the push that the Linux phone community needs to make it proper and good.
We currently need a KDE phone that they sell where I can buy a KDE phone and support them that way.
The pieces are coming together for Linux notably:
I'm getting pretty sick of Google and other corpos locking down Android so fuck them, third best phone OS will have to do and I'll do banking in the mobile browser page.
I just bought the cheapest fairphone I could get to replace my old pixel. Now it's time to try proper linux on mobile for the first time. I'm excited!
Almost 15 years on Android finally coming to an end! My first Android phone came with Android 2.1 and now 14 shall be the last version I'll ever use.
That's probably why risc-v is getting quite popular in embedded stuff - smaller companies wanting more supply chain independence. Hopefully it'll start to get more powerful soon for more serious computing. Its nice that stuff like debian now has risk-v version too.
Nahhhhhh that's far more interesting in cause. Moore's law has been dead for like... I dunno', at least a decade by now? Bigger and bigger instruction sets have similarly hit their max return on investment. RISC-V is making a comeback solely because it's literally competative now that frequency and even fancy inctructions have long since tapped out for performance gains.
Especially with GPU compute becoming more and more of a thing since DX11+. Parallel computation has become more and more of a well understood task with great ROI while increasing single threaded performance has been a wizard's game for yeeeaaaaars.
It's gotten to the point where some companies are aiming to produce competative RISC-V desktops and servers.
Linux on the phone has come a long way I hear. I have been meaning to buy one and see if it can be my daily driver. Google being shitty would definitely push me there
I even liked the idea I saw mentioned today where maybe it's time for 2 devices.
One that just does phone calls and SMS.
The other is a tiny portable Linux computer that does everything else. Who needs android or apps anyway?
That seems inconvenient. Can Linux phones not do calls and SMS?
You can get a retro phone for like £15 or so. Mine even has a (shit) camera and a 64GB SD card to expand the internal 32MB (yes MB) storage.
There's also Europe, which has led the way in regulating against monopolistic power for Big Tech.
Just use Linux?
I don't understand the question...
It is entirely possible to lock down computer parts to only run Windows and signed drivers. However, the sheer amount of available computer parts, open sourced hardware, widely understood technologies, and not enough monopoly makes this unfeasible for anyone to really try to implement (yet).
If Intel started doing Windows only, they would lose so much revenue from big corporations and data centers it would ruin them, and everyone would just buy AMD instead. Consumer market in computer sector is secondary.
For phones, you really do not have enough alternatives. You choose between evil and more evil. Think of it as Linux in it's starting days - missing features that makes it unusable for the common folk. Linux phones haven't matured yet, that's why you have to choose between feature rich vs heavily degraded user experience, as opposed to minor inconvenience of not being able to run some apps.
We already have that. A reason they want to shift to ARM is so they can lock the hardware down.
That is already a thing in ARM laptops
It'll just be another day for apple users.
I imagine this will actually create competition. Android is open source. It can be forked.
Also there will always be things like raspberry pi and arduino.
Android is barely open source, and AOSP can no longer directly run on any hardware, not even the pixel. It's not really forkable and maintainable in any ongoing sense.
You need to be an OEM to get access to the latest android source code now.
The question is, who wants to fork and maintain android? That's a massive undertaking, one that wouldn't seem worth it until it started getting meaningful percentages of market share.
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