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Comment by wegfawefgawefg | Hacker News Reader

anybody who really wants to learn to code will just install linux on an old clunker. every uni and highschool student i know who means business does this.

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Yes I do that too but using VMs. I hope I'm just overthinking.

I'm scared too - the iPhone is pretty completely locked down. Microsoft Realllly wanted TPMs to be mandatory for win 11. It seems like only a matter of time that your OS will be inconfigurable.

There are billions of CPUs floating around and none of them are going to be magically prevented from running Linux. New computers in some markets like US and UK, I don’t know, maybe if a hot cyberwar with china breaks out there will be a ban on new PCs that can’t be secured by the NSA but I can’t relate to the hand wringing about losing control, we still live in a capitalist society and there’s enough people that hate Windows randomly breaking shit that there will be other options besides CoPilot PCs and Apple Intelligent Macs.

> There are billions of CPUs floating around and none of them are going to be magically prevented from running Linux.

It's called secure boot and there's nothing magical about it. It's already here. You have it in "your" CPU. For now, you can still disable it after it boots the signed UEFI/bootloader. It won't be long until that option is gone forever.

Anyone who wants to learn coding cannot do so in a locked down environment. This is why an iPad is actually detrimental to digital competency in the long run compared to personal computers. They aren't even safer, since these devices often have payment information baked into their being and your kid spending roblox bucks.

Also, you cannot experiment in a safe environment. Safe environments are adequate if your are infantile. But you stay that way if you don't get freedom.

i dont know any 15 year olds without access to a laptop in some form. mac os has a very posix shell. i did K&R c on an old macbook. stop wasting time worrying about this and go buy a 50 pack of old office thinkpads and give them to every teenager you know. and if they say no just break their phone in half. thank me later son i love you papa i wish i knew how much i loved arch linux before you died.

True and I do distribute machines where I can and people are generally very happy about it. MacOS is still a very useful system compared to iOS. I hope they adapt the latter to the former and not the other way around.

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