If it would be a standard intented for Unix ideology and not business requirements of X11 (35+ years is a long time) or Wayland (RedHat is one company with its own interests, sometimes contradicting, say, mine as a Unix user), then it could work well.
X11 paradigm I like more than that of Wayland, but it could use some clearly incompatible changes.
I don’t even remember my old ICQ UIN. People usually do that.
So yes, bring in IPv6.
I, on the contrary, think it’s cool for things to be universal, layered and reusable for different tasks.
For me it’s more pleasant than editing formulae in LO, but still took a lot of time.
Matrix I have doubts about. The idea of Tox was nicer, but the implementation quality and the scandal at some point didn’t help.
Tox felt more playable, like piping files over it or a remote shell over it (I know, bad associations, but still), or even using it for VPN. I think there were clients allowing to do such stuff, and the protocol allows it.
EDIT: I mean, it’s still alive, just don’t see it claiming the place of FOSS old Skype replacement as it did.
GNUNet - all you people mentioning it have peers? I tried to set it up a few weeks ago, couldn’t get peers.
Yggdrasil - feels cool.
I2P - not intended for that, I think.
Also KDX. I was too young to use that, but tried and it’s cool. Sadly even FOSS clients are all dead and don’t build anymore. (I think I had limited success with patching one called Fidelio to build, but that was a few years ago and I can’t find any traces of that attempt.)
The scariest thing they can do to Linux now market-wise is to bring back Windows 2000’s UI and paradigm and cleanliness, but with modern kernel and drivers and functionality.
Thankfully they are too dumb for that.
In Russian it’s called Вендекапец and is a bit like second coming.
Maybe it’s not happening yet, but the bigger share it has, the faster it’ll grow.
And MS and Apple have only themselves to blame.
20 years ago, when the first Linux offensive happened, so to say, with Mandrake and a wave of Linux-native games and proprietary products, and IBM support, people would criticize Linux for having inconsistent chaotic UIs and experience. I was a Windows-only kid, so this is retrospective and people can correct me.
Not sure if anybody remembers, but then you could find most of Windows’ important settings in one place, and it looked so polished and patient and relaxing, both 2000 and XP.
Mac OS X was all about toys and shiny colors, but there was also the spirit of it being very polished and consistent and light and fresh.
So - Linux can still be very usable. While both MacOS and Windows even look cheap, I wonder how they managed to achieve that. Even Gnome doesn’t look cheap despite desperately trying to imitate MacOS. Not even speaking about ergonomics.
Well, people blamed old (archaic, what it had when it was an Amiga program) UI for being hard to use, but the new one is even harder, so dunno.
I touched Blender with the old UI somewhere in late 00s on Windows, managed to sculpt and render a few clumsy objects. I don’t remember how long it took, but it feels as if the new one took twice that for the same.
EDIT: On the actual subject - yes, that too. I sometimes think that (moderate) positive inflation is not always better than deflation. It encourages a narrow way of thinking where we always stop at first local optimum. Say, MSO is cheaper right now than LO - then we choose MSO, period. Nobody thinks about finding a bigger optimum, because constant inflation psychologically encourages you to think that way. That’s just clumsy philosophy.
It’s a question of both expenses and dependency on a monopolist.
There simply won’t ever be an opportunity to move from MS solutions to FOSS solutions which won’t have these problems.
Being dependent is possibly more expensive in the long term too.
So two people communicate, one is American speaking English and the other is a Natmurrikan, speaking their Natmurrikan language. The former communicates with the latter and the latter communicates with the former. So if they speak Natmurrikan and it doesn’t feel natural for the American, is that right that this is the American’s fault?