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Comment by microtonal | Hacker News Reader

But it's the other way around. Can you distribute a native application on macOS without Apple's blessing? No, you can't (not when Catalina will be out anyway).

Yes you can:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/unsigned-apps-catalyst-...

WASM is the next best thing to an open, yet secure, platform.

So, instead of walled gardens with signed and checked applications (bad). We have to run untrusted and unchecked code of vendors who run code to track your movements around the web and in their applications? (Even worse)

Desktop Linux aside

Maybe we should make Linux an acceptable platform for more people rather than optimizing for proprietary web applications that you don't even own a copy of anymore.

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> Maybe we should make Linux an acceptable platform for more people rather than optimizing for proprietary web applications that you don't even own a copy of anymore.

Won't ever happen for two reasons: 1) The Linux Desktop community would have to admit that there are better ways to do things, and 2) They'd have to agree on what those things are. 20 years of Linux Desktop history show these things to be impossible.

Theoretically, a new community could spring up and put a new userland on top of the Linux kernel, like Android did, but it would seem like the people who have the interest in doing such a thing (like myself) lack enough time, talent, and/or ability to organize sufficiently to pull it off. Not to mention that we'd all have to agree too.

I lack the talent, but I'm definitely interested.

Have you taken a look around Casey Muratori's handmade.network? Or interacted much with the guys who watch Jonathan Blow's livestreams? They make much the same point you do about taking the linux kernel and creating a new userland around it.

Anyone who's interested in working on something like this, email walkinginalinuxuserland@lj3.me. The least we could all do is keep in touch, right?

Yes, I've hung out on Johns and Casey's streams. I don't bother much with handmade.network because very little there interests me. Essence is kinda neat, but it is a long way from practicality and I'm not sure how much my ideals and Nakst's align.

I also think a forum or IRC channel would be more appropriate, but email is a start and I appreciate you taking the initiative.

See also Probono's Hello[0], but I'm not sure he hasn't decided that Haiku already fits for him.

[0] https://github.com/probonopd/hello

> We have to run untrusted and unchecked code of vendors who run code to track your movements around the web and in their applications? (Even worse)

I don't think that is the case. Simply because a WASM application will have to request the permissions it needs up front (assuming a sane runtime) and you don't have to give anything run in background permissions... also, it won't have access to other apps, so it can't really track you.

The bigger issue with Desktop linux is very few people run it, and targeting a specific subset for linux as separate from other platforms is difficult and costly, to say the least.

This is it. Let's be honest - the things that make linux difficult are wireless and graphics drivers because the kernel api's keep changing (to prevent vendors from making non-open-source drivers). Why can't we write a unix compatible desktop os whose only difference is running the drivers in userspace?

Something like Redox(1). It's even MIT licensed, so you could include it in a commercial distribution with your own changes if you so chose when you made your gui.

1. https://www.redox-os.org

> So, instead of walled gardens with signed and checked applications (bad). We have to run untrusted and unchecked code

and sandboxed. yes, this is way forward.

"yes, this is way forward." - I don't think so

Well the alternative is exchanging data, not code. Actually this was the initial idea on the web, hyperlinked data. Look where that brought us. Maybe we could devise a better model with a client (code) that is simple enough and universal enough, and the server providing/receiving only data and not code? That is, instead of me running the publisher's code on my terminal, i run my code on the publisher's data, exchanging data with them. I am not aware of anything to that effect that is universal enough to replace the web. Thus, sandoxing untrusted code as being the way forward.

I think the way forward is to stop worry too much. Like you really gonna be worrying running "flight simulator". I think it is a FUD designed mostly to support big and cloudy providers. Those are the real entities one should worry about. They spy 24x7 .

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