Context! This was a ramble from a while ago. I don’t really even remember what I was on about. Oh well, read at your own risk.
I would characterize myself as a serial non-participator. I don’t know if others would agree, but I generally shy away from joining group, nor often don’t feel a part of a group nor want to be described as part of a given group.
I don’t get into sports, nor especially ‘have a team’, I don’t understand the concept (I do, but I don’t engage with it) the being a fan of a team. I really do no get football people who speak in this inclusive “we” when talking about things regarding “their” team. It’s illogical. The emotional and psychologic connection there ust makes no sense to me. I’ve never joined a political party. I almost considering doing so a decade ago, a third part in the US, but I didn’t.
It’s a part of my mentality and pyschology, but I also don’t like the idea of people dregdging up the digital past and finding I was “a part of X party” or whatever. This winter I avoided both ‘holiday’ parties at my place of work. One, for simpler reason of driving all in, an hour and a half, just isn’t worth it. The co-location office I am now assigned to is a lot closer. But I left before that one started. I just couldn’t do it. I’ve felt like an interloper and an outside that doesn’t really belong since I have been forced to come back to the office.
Also, I have been on my own leaning towards Linux for more than a decade now. I got introduced initially because a friend wanted to build one of those dynamic sandox thangs where it has the Xbox kinect above it and it projects a topographic map and when a person moves the sand it recalculates and redraws the topo map based on the newly adjusted sand. Cool idea. Probably a pain to maintain. Anyway, it got my Linux curious, and since then I have off and on come back to it. Especially when I was taking a class in informatics with python and it was just generally easier to use Linux to make command line programs. And since then I have dabbled. And I suppose I am far from the only one, but I have been leaning towards opensource everything for years. I used to watch a lot more videos of folks talking about linux stuff, Luke smith for instance, until I realized he’s probably gonna be the unabomber 2.0 with his shack in the woods, yelling cuck for no reason, having old Georgia flags with the confederate battle flag still in it, etc. But also, and I know I’m not the only one, but Microsoft and it’s copilot are annoying and unecessary, yet, the enshittification, where products aren’t really getting better, their just going onto the internet + AI, it’s not longer the case that I own this instance, I pay a subscription fee to be able to use it, which really makes little sense. I partly get the argument about it’s constantly maintained, but what improvements have I seen in Microsoft’s Office Suite in a decade? Little to None. Adobe is even worse about this. And being a GIS person, I have been using ESRI products for years. I’ve been using QGIS longer, often because of the stupid licenses needed for ESRI. And then a while ago I realized I really don’t need Adobe. so I just killed my subscription and looked for alternatives and ya know what? It wasn’t that hard. Thanks KDE team! GIMP (still a terrible name), Inkscape, Okular, and LibreOffice cover the vast majority of my needs. Maybe I’ve started doing text typing rambles more because it’s easier on Linux/KDE with Kate, or I’ve become old. Or I’ve just got my thinks lately. I really don’t know.
But the fact that I go on to this JerboaSummit and I see Linux stuff on there is weird to me. I often feel like Linux is more or less a thing that is kind of an insular community, and one has to go looking for it. So I was surprised to see it popping up in this jerboa. My first thought is: has some kind of algorithm been feeding it data from my phones searches and what it has heard me saying? I find it surprising. I know I can’t be as independent minded as I would like to think, but I actively try to avoid group think and really do not like the idea of large corporations, groups, poltical parties, governments, etc, manipulating the way I think. So much advertising and marketing is just manipulation to get you to buy into something you don’t need. I’ll find it if I need it. If I need it, I’ll probably know what to get. So, so much marketing is just a bunch of bullshit. Our western economy is so heavily built on just ads, ads, ads, everywhere ads. I just think of Marques Brownlee, who used to be a good tech reviewer/journalist on Youtube, but recently seems to have become a bit of a interviewer shill, just straight up being the guy doing any independent ad on youtube during an “ad break”/interuption on someone’s video. Not a sponsored ad read on his own video, not him interviewing someone about a product so a company can talk about it, not a softball interview where there is no pushback and he let’s the company rep tell whatever lies and nonsense that follows the company line, nope. He’s now turned to a celebrity endorser. Oh, and that’s another thing. I’ve noticed a lot of actors from when I was younger have moved from movies to just being a celebrity endorser. Shilling bullshit. What the fuck has this world come to? It’s rather ridiculous. Oh, and the shitty reddit ads that are styled to look just like a reddit post and if you aren’t mildly sharp eyed and notice that isn’t not a post in a r/ but it’s showing a u/ you can easily get duped by their 10+ year old meme they’re trying to trick you with.
And I don’t know if I am just getting old and have no one to talk to, buit have a genetic disposition to ramble… maybe that’s why people made journals for the last 10,000 years. Or, if it is because the world is shifting and I am not liking it, becoming the millenial -> boomer, like the genx -> boomer slide. Oh noes! I don’t know. I don’t like the idea of being mentally manipulated into thinking things or wanting things. I rarely think I am truly original. Most of my goofy quirks I have stolen from elsewhere and just forget where they came from. Except Reekris. That one I didn’t invent and I know the exact place it came from. But is this some kind of secondary existenial crisis, older and more informed, than when I was 27? Is this what people talk about with a ‘mid life crisis’? I don’t want a corvertte. Those are stupid. Also, I don’t know if my shift to open source has been driven by frustration, or ease of access, or what. Also, my type rambling - is it just easier on Linux to open Kate and just go to town with the typing versus in Wandows with Word. Oh, and with Word these days, wtf. Also, Notepad. WTF!? Why does it have to, every time I open it automatically try to go back to whatever the last thing was? What if I want to just start blank and fresh and new? Notepad I’ve always enjoyed for a quick copy and paste of something. Quick and simple. Nope. Not anymore. Microsoft decided that now we need to hold on to whatever was last open and open it as the primary document in your face when I open it. So I have to close that, close notepad and then reopen it. Every time. Just the simple acts of closing notepad, and not saving, isn’t enough to start fresh the next time. Why? Who the fuck thought that was better? That’s stupid.
But when the Linux and open source stuff, I lament the fact that in some ways I am completely unoriginal and late to the game. It’s taken me this long and we’re in 2026 and I am not finally committing. Granted, I’ve dabbled for 10+ years before doing this. Granted, this isn’t some grand standing dummy post on the internet for clout “Hello reddit I am officially leaving” because nobody cares and we all know posts like that are for the karma and attention. My slide towards linux has been a slow and gradual shift. I’ve had an old laptop running it I keep in my workroom that’s had a variety of distros on it for going on 8 years now. It’s been my go to aside from my desktop and got more use than my windows laptop.
Being forced back into the office and having to use ESRI products more has driven me more towards not using proprietary software. And there are folks saying “open source” just isn’t as good, and I both understand that sentiment and disagree. I feel like that is a tired argument that would have worked in 2011. But Especially now, considering the state of things, where open source has gained more traction, become more common, big legal fights with apple and their app store, epic games and their fights about app stuff (wait those are the same thing), but also more attention given to the way apple does things, microft’s practices, windows 10 to windows 11, the injection of AI into fucking everything… I suppose I have been on the periphery of this, not ahead of any curve, but spear heading anything, but being pretty aware and dabbling. Puttin up with the nonsense. But honestly, I’m pretty done. I don’t want adobe or a subscription to them, nor amazon for prime.
I don’t really think I actually need microsoft 365 or whatever. I don’ t think that the office Suite really provides anything I can’t get on Linux or from the Libre Office Suite. I am really starting to think a lot of the office suite is bullshit and tailored to those who don’t care and aren’t tech saavy. I don’t really think Google’s stuff is terrible, but I wound’t opt for it as my go to either. I do like Go, and I will say I prefer Gemini over ChatGPT. I do think I may start looking at converting to Proton mail or something similar. Oh, and now I am not sure what to believe about Brave. I thought Brave was a pretty great browser. But now I am seeing folking on this Jerboa/Lemmy talking about how Brave is actually kind of shit because of their head person (like musk to tesla). But then the browser alternatives, minus FireFox (which has been going in a rather less satisfactory direction) are ones I have never heard of. So either I’m well out of the loop or these folks are way out in the fringes. I really don’t know. I also feel like I live in the righ-side section of the dunning kruger chart. I also sort of think that since that has become so popular to reference that I question my own referencing of it.
To end: I lost where I was going with any of this.