[fouc]

It's depressing to think that the Cambrian explosion that lead to a variety of hardware, software, operating systems, and web browsers and great freedom and power for the end user is gradually getting culled and turning into a monoculture of walled gardens and the end users are just getting screwed.

[411111111111111]

Linux is considered a walled garden? Really?

I mean yeah, there were more operating systems before, some of which were open.. but I'm not convinced it's necessarily bad to have one open system win.

If it didn't, I'm pretty sure there would be a lot more people using windows servers, which I think would've been far worse for the open community.

[fouc]

To be clear I wasn't calling Linux a walled garden. But I was talking about overall trends. For example, there some are efforts to push Linux in this direction, most recently with some centralized app/package store.

Also Linux Foundation was setup and is funded by big corporations like Microsoft, Google, etc in order to find ways to exert influence over Linux's growth.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> Linux is considered a walled garden? Really?

Kinda, yeah. At least in the Desktop space it seems like it desperately wants to be and Canonical in particular works to push it in that direction. For instance, it is highly discouraged to install software from outside your distro's repository.

[_emacsomancer_]

Talking about Canonical (which advocates Snaps as a supplement to the distro's repo) and "it is highly discouraged to install software from outside your distro's repository" in the same breath is rather odd.

As is thinking that Linux of all OSes is in any way a walled garden.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Snap is very canonical centric. You cannot set up your own snap store, automatic updates are mandatory, etc. It's is for all intents and purposes a second Ubuntu repo with even stricter control.

[_emacsomancer_]

Multiple repos using different applications then.

And the general proliferation of Appimages, Flatpak, Nix, Guix, Docker containers, and of course local building of software all tell against the "using software from outside the distro's repos is discouraged" representation.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Of those listed, only AppImage is as easy to publish and install as your average Windows software (Flatpak is a not-so-close second with significantly more limitations). And then you get prominent FOSS developers like Drew DeVault saying that those distribution methods are terrible ideas because they are dangerous. The way things work in the Linux Desktop and its community are just not conducive to simply passing around software without middlemen the way it has been in real personal computing systems since the 80s.