Raven FellBlade

How long do you think before he just vanishes?

Zero… point… zero.

“Goodbye Horses” intensifies

The N64 was the only Nintendo console I skipped. I just couldn’t afford two consoles and the PlayStation was obviously a better choice, but I still kinda wish I had gotten to experience Ocarina and Majora’s Mask when they were brand new and not years later on the GameCube. I played at my friend’s houses, but just hated that controller. The Wavebird made it a bit more palatable, but it was still just too “avante garde” for its own good. Feels like I needed yo shove a mop handle in the expansion port and use it as a trident.

Ray? Ray…

This

“Wrote a wrapper”. Oh, is that all? It’s just that easy, huh?

Then why can none of these FOSS apps deliver the same experience, if Dawson is such an untalented hack?

You either have no clue of what you’re talking about, or you’re a troll. From my perspective, there is no substantive difference. If it’s such an easy shtick, the do it yourself, and do a better job. Put up, or shut up. Nobody asked for your respect, and I’m certain you know precisely where you can shove it.

It comes from a ten year period of distro-hopping a dozen different Linux distros that ultimately all fell short of delivering an experience anywhere near as stable or reliable as Windows or Mac OS. The closest I got to that was Mint, which I ended up using from Mint 9 thru Mint 17. And then the drivers for my nVidia graphics card just…broke. I had my laptop set up as a dual boot, and until that driver mess, rarely ever booted Windows. After the driver busted, I found myself having less and less interest in spending ungodly hours trying to coax some other distro into cooperating (Ubuntu, Pentoo, Kali, Knoppix). Every distro would have some kind of conflict or missing libs or some other issue requiring hours of fixing config files or finding exactly the correct repo to install from so as not to break compatibility with something else. It just got exhausting, like having a second job just to maintain a functioning desktop that wasn’t full of obsolete or deprecated software. Mind you, I gave up back in 2015. I did wonder if I should have given LM 18 a try when it came out about a year later, but by then, I had largely just moved on from PCs as an interest altogether. I just didn’t have the budget to keep up with hardware, and my job as an over the road driver at a time lent itself to portable gaming and consoles. I couldn’t justify spending another 2 grand on another laptop that would be obsolete in two or three years.

So yes, it is my own experience with FOSS software, and lots and lots of it, and all of the headaches that went along with it. I absolutely adored Mint when it worked. It’s just too bad that that only lasted a couple years, at least for me.

From the perspective of someone who isn’t currently in the “Bad If Not FOSS” mindset, this image really gets the impression backwards. To the average user who doesn’t appreciate the user-unfriendly klunk and jank that is inherent to FOSS interfaces, it really feels like the image should depict a bunch of FOSS Teletubbies being intruded upon by a competent Power Ranger.

I used to be a FOSS guy. And then I realized I valued my time and sanity way too much to spend more time troubleshooting and nudging my software into just working normally than I did actually using it.

FOSS software as the underpinning of the platform that is then accessed by a closed-source client is, ultimately, the best circumstance we could ask for. Clients are what the user actually interacts with. If that experience is more engaging and approachable, you get many more users on the platform overall, without threatening the sanctity of the freedom of the FOSS platform it all runs on. There is no one authority to make unilateral decisions to derail the platform, while still offering a more welcoming public face. If you can’t understand that, or don’t care to recognize it, that you’re content to let the platform wallow in obscurity.

It’s amazing how divorced from reality the FOSS obsessed can be whenever anyone mentions non-FOSS apps. Nobody is bending over backwards, and nobody is sucking anyone’s schlong. If Sync were to have been FOSS, you’d be first in line to sing its praises. This trollish behavior doesn’t win anyone over to the “All Software Must Be Foss” camp at all. Must be a PC Master Race thing.

FOSS platforms with closed clients are fine, because nobody has any unilateral ability to dictate the direction of the platform. You can always choose whichever client you want, so long as the underlying platform is FOSS.

Reddit and Twitter have proven that closed platforms aren’t compatible with FOSS clients because eventually, the closed platform will force out all competing clients to monetize every last bit of traffic it can.

And honestly, I have a higher degree of trust for Sync Apps LTD than I do for most others because they have historically been above-board in their dealings and have always been user-forward in everything they do. If that changes, then it changes. And so might my decision to support them. However, considering their entire business model is and has been dependent on the continued loyalty of their user base, I doubt they will make any significant changes that could affect their reputation.

And let’s be honest, where software is concerned, there’s a reason that all software isn’t FOSS, beyond just “greedy capitalist overlords”. The overwhelming majority of FOSS software is simply not as user-friendly or, in many cases, stable or even usable to people who don’t possess a significant degree of computer software and hardware literary. Most folks don’t have the know-how or time to go combing through dozens of conflicting and outright contradictory online resources trying to figure out exactly which .lib file is causing their software to crash on startup, or to learn how the hell to use github.