But I do agree. It’s sad to see the PC-era, and the free software ideals, die-off. Slowly the idea of running your own software on your own devices is becoing arcane.
Ever since I've been using computers (late 90's onward), my experience has been that running your own software has always been arcane. I can count on one hand people I've known in the flesh who've done this. Peoples' eyes get wide as if you're about to empty their bank account with your mind if you tell them you wrote a script or a program to do even the simplest of things.
Joe and Jane Phonetypical of today wouldn't have been the proprietary software-creating types of yesterday, they would've been the AOL, Microsoft Word and solitaire-using types.
But yeah, I see your point. Of course my memory is somewhat clouded by the circle of people I choose to surround me with.
(Edit: But even the 90s has started the downward slope. There was a time before that, and in first half when systems booted into a BASIC-interpreter)
An interesting case to exemplify: Minecraft started out as java application. You downloaded a set of jar-files an ran. The software was proprietary, but it was yours to run, and java being what it is, was fairly simple to modify and extend. A large community of tinkeres and hackers grew up around this capability of modding the software in various ways.
Then commoditization happens, Microsoft bought it, rewrite it in c++ and started selling it as a service with an app-store. Modding is still part of the echosystem, but the barrier to entry is sufficiently high that I have hard time imagine any new generations of hackers growing up as Minecraft modders.
*Im of course aware you can root Android phones and jailbreak iPhones, again this isnt what OP is talking about - they void warranties and are challenging/time consuming even for tech people.
https://motorola-global-portal.custhelp.com/app/standalone/b...
However, I agree that OP is talking about document centered interface instead of application centered.
Nowadays, Lineage will work perfectly OOTB 99% of the time. And 100% of the time if you buy a phone which is already compatible.
EDIT: Here's another example. Let's say you have a VPS on which you have root, but you don't have ring 0 access on the machine where it's running. Are you in control then?
Unless you have root access someone else gets to define what “general purpose” is.
Someone else gets to tell you “no, that’s off limits”.
That’s doesn’t sound like being in control of your own device to me.
Root access is just a platform specific construct, and it doesn't necessarily have an important purpose on every platform. Furthermore there are lots of ways that a platform could take away your control even if you had root access, such as through binary firmware blobs (which I'm sure you're running dozens right now, as am I probably).
Root access is the machine never being permitted to tell the human owner “no”.
Nothing platform-specific about that what so ever.
On the contrary I’d rather say it’s so detached from platform it’s more like a fundamental principle than anything else, a technological ism of sorts.
Nowhere are Linux syscalls part of the official stable APIs.
However, needing tinkering is not generally a desirable capability from an everyday appliance.
Ford is now down to a single gasoline car.