The complexity of digital life takes on dimensions that make me doubt whether it can continue in the long term.
theoretically.
in practice the added latency is a problem outside of casual use.
update: clarification seems to be neccessary as i was talking about audio/video/gaming type workload, NOT office stuff
Cloud gaming will probably be the next frontier in this.
Not to mention that it's ridiculously wasteful.
But you're right, one shouldn't automatically assume that streaming is more wasteful than letting the resources sit idle... (one issue here is the assumptions about how fast computers are replaced for consumerist reasons ?)
(And this would still leave the issue of the loss of ownership.)
I believe that thats your experience. Its not really because the technology is improving though, its because you're growing older.
The latency is absolutely horrendous, and anyone thats used to a decently performing system will not agree with your opinion.
As a simple example: i can easily code 6+h with no break on a good system, with these mainframe system i'm gonna take a break at least every hour because the fatigue builds up so quickly. Its every little interaction, simple input that doesn't appear for 50+ms, switching owrkspaces thats delayed for 150+ms.
It was a bad enough experience, that it is now a part of my interview questions if the company works through remote desktop solutions.
That said, I think we either need proper OS level sandboxing, something like Qubes or just using multiple VMs or devices with remoting. It doesn't feel viable to have something like Discord or other communication software or things with account tokens, and executables like software or games running on the same install, whereas dual booting isn't viable for that either.
So maybe cool for people with itches or startup aspirations, more hassle for everyone else.
Are people just doing everything locally or something?
All this digital stuff falls naturally to me, but for the most part, people my age and older really don't cope well with the digital world. I'm an exception because I got my feet wet in the mini/timesharing environment, just as personal computing was beginning to take off, and didn't lose interest.
Also, how well are we really teaching the next generation? I see both good and bad in that regard, with Pi, Arduino, etc. being the brightest spot, and locked-down ecosystems and pervasive surveillance the darkest.
And, of course, there's the whole culture problem. The notion of "computer literacy" went from "knowing how to use a computer" to "knowing how to use Word and Excel" almost overnight. Are schools actually using things like the Pi and Arduino, or are we leaving it to parents to get such things into their hands?
Gen Z here checking in to say almost entirely the latter :/ .
Some schools have an elective that would get things into the hands of kids, but nowhere near 100% and they generally have a pretty low coverage of students at the school.
Have they managed to get rid of Xorg and the terrible screen tearing issue that should be a thing of the past in 2023? I remember there was a project named SpectrumOS that tried to do something similar to QubesOS but with nixos, crosVM and wayland. AFAIK the project stalled.
I am using a sort of middle ground between traditionnal desktop and QubesOS. I run a number of VMs on my machine for different purpose and use waypipe to start apps as individual windows on the main desktop. I don't really have the copy/paste separation that QubesOS has, nor a separation between host and network VM but at least I can separate duties, filesystems and seamless windows showing on only one desktop. To distinguishes the browser and terminal windows I use different themes.
https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/5104
https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/7591
If not, try this: https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/6880#issuecom...
There is no tearing on my Librem laptops.
It is the first time I hear about that Tearfree option and I am wondering. If it exists and it isn't the default behavior, it means there must be some annoying drawbacks right?
I hate to call it out, but, isn’t that table stakes? Blending work and personal environments should be an obvious no. Are employers out there ok with this?
It depends on where you work, how much people will care and whether there are resources to do anything about it.
I think the issue probably isn't uncommon for freelancers/contractors too.
Hobby and personal stuff I think a lot of people mix, I don't use the machine where I do bank/tax/etc stuff for hobby work, but I'm not sure that's common.