This just makes me worried to rely on uBO but more because what if the author just fucks off because someone else pissed them off.

That is very concerning to me, also.

Large parts of the internet relying on one or two tiny one-man FOSS projects? (UBO and ADguard are often cited as the only two reliable-ish and safe adblockers)

If he can’t be bothered with that nonsense, how secure is UBO’s future? How secure is the future of adblocking?

I would bet that advertising companies are rubbing their hands now and planning to ramp up pressure against these poor devs.

I think Ubuntu made sense back in the day when Debian wasn’t as user-friendly.

This is a very good point.

When Ubuntu launched, it was a big moment for linux. Before then, setting up a linux GUI was a lot of pain (remember setting modelines for individual monitors and the endless fiddling that took - and forget about multiple monitors). Ubuntu made GUI easy - it just worked out of the box for most people. It jumped Linux forwards as a desktop a huge way and adoption grew a lot. They also physically posted you a set of CDs or a DVD for free! And they did a bunch of stuff for educational usage, and getting computers across Africa.

That was all pretty amazing at the time and all very positive.

But then everyone else caught up with the usability and they turned into a corporate entity. Somewhere along the way they stopped listening to their users, or at least the users felt they had no voice, and a lot more linux distros appeared.

Anarchism is all about working together to build a better world where everyone has all of their needs met,

Hmm, I was working with the classic disctionary definition which is “a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems.”

But you’re right, anarchism does have that other meaning, so perhaps a better word would be “chaos”.

His actions in supporting Trump in the US, promoting hate and extermist views on X globally, and encouraging civil war in the UK do all fit a chaos agenda. That’s not about money - at least, not that I can see.

He is one of the world’s most dangerous people, however, and I don’t say that lightly. Not least because of his history of being unpredictable.

More governments should follow Brazil’s example and push back.

He has more than anyone else in the history of the world. By any scale, he’s won at money.

That’s been said, and perhaps it has been true. But when you’re the richest man in the world by a significant margin, you have literally won at money and to remain competitive you need to move onto other things. Like the power of politics, and working to destabilise multiple countries at once.

He’s already got all the money and most of the power. Now his hobby is far right extremism and anarchy.

Over the past year Musk has removed all masks and clearly believes he can operate beyond the law. His motives are clearly to watch the world burn. He is an extremely dangerous, unpredictable and powerful man, threatening democracy across the globe.

Our governments need to protect us from him. Brazil’s being brave here, I hope they’re just the first.

I’m inclined to give Linux more benefit of the doubt than, say, Windows. That’s because of the motives behind it.

Microsoft have a very long history of making design choices in their software that users don’t like, and quite often that’s because it suits their interests more than their customers. They are a commercial business that exists to benefit itself, after all. Same with Apple. Money spoils everything pure, after all. You mention privacy, but that’s just one more example of someone wanting to benefit financially from you - it’s just in a less transparent and more open-ended way than paying them some cash.

Linux, because that monetary incentive is far less, is usually designed simply “to be better”. The developers are often primary users of the software. Sure - sometimes developers make choices that confuses users, but that over-arching driving business interest just isn’t there.

Feels like another hate-pushing cesspit to avoid.

If it did, then the world would be a perfect place by now. Indeed, many things are better - but there’s enough people hard at work sowing discontent and hate to ensure it isn’t.

Bless you for being an optimist, but I don’t think it works like that. I really wish it did though.

Agree - after they started bundling adware in downloads (2013ish?), all the decent projects seemed to move to github en masse.

Those projects that stayed were mostly already stagnant, or the maintainers didn’t use git and didn’t want to learn, or had some other reason that allowed them to accept advertising on their work.

Simple and reliable has a lot to be said for it.

(Ignoring the ageist and sexist “old men” statements in this thread because it’s irrelevant)

They will die out,

… and be replaced with other technically invested people who are resistant to change. Such as with every massive project ever - at least until you get a tyrant who ignores the feelings and work of of others and is in a position to push through their own vision.

The BBC still uses it to break news, I’m saddened to say.

Fun - we get to see how susceptible Meta is to blackmail, for that’s what this is. “Illegal” from Mr Trump means “Anything I don’t agree with”

OP is on OpenWRT

Fair point - I missed that, buried in the comments as it was.

In that scenario, you use what’s available, I guess.

OP said they just want to copy a binary around. Can you do that with perl?

This is linux. Someone will have done it.

Wow, you’re a dick.

Try it now - go on. Type “perl” and tell me what you get.

And if you’re so certain it’s not used, try removing it and see how well your computer works afterwards.

I work at scale - deploying scripts to hundreds of linux machines and any package you install will be multiplied that many times on the backend storage. You don’t get the luxury of installing anything that isn’t essential.