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Ask HN: Do you live a Free Software only life?

Sometimes I consider the thought of moving towards free software only. But then I worry about the worse UI/UX that free software usually provides. Are there any of you who have recently made the switch to Free Software? What was your experience? Do you miss anything from the non-free software world?

mindcrime 8y ago
In my personal life, I use almost exclusively Free / Open Source Software. At least when I'm on a PC, the OS and all the apps I use are F/OSS. My phone runs Android which at least uses an OSS kernel, but I do still use the closed source Google apps. I keep thinking one day I'll switch to something like "Whatever Cyanogenmod is called these days" but I haven't made that leap yet. I don't really miss anything. I'm not terribly picky about UI, and I've been doing things this way for about 15 years, so I'm pretty much inured to any pain I might feel from missing any closed source stuff. And frankly, I consider KDE to have a strictly superior user experience to, say, Windows, anyway. At my day job, though, I am stuck using Windows, Outlook, etc. :-(
vinayan3 8y ago
Richard Stallman has a good description of what the computing environment which has only free and open software is like. https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html One big issue is that streaming movies or tv shows might be tough. Some of the decoders used are closed source.
elviejo 8y ago
I haven't thought about this question in a long time... Because in a long there hasn't been anything I miss from the closed source world. On the contrary there are many things I miss when I'm forced to work on a Windows or a Mac machine. 1. A window manager like i3 or xmonad
cbluth 8y ago
I've been using Linux on my personal laptop since about 2006, and Linux on my work laptops since 2011, and cyanogenmod/lineageos on my phone since about 2012. I also have a little lakka.tv device hooked up to my tv. My personal preference, I love gnome3 and android. I prefer them over the osx/ios. And the interface on lakka is pretty amazing. I have everything I need, and I haven't looked back. I certainly own things like video game consoles which aren't OSS, but I like to buy them to hack them, just for fun, I guess. I use tons of non-free stuff like google docs et al, and whatever else is convenient, easy. Every macbook ive owned has had Linux on it within minutes after removing it from the box.
fturco 8y ago
I try to use free software only, but unfortunately that's not always the case. For example the BIOS of my desktop computer is proprietary. I also don't use a FSF-approved GNU/Linux distribution on my desktop because I prefer Gentoo. But I set ACCEPT_LICENSE="-* @FREE" and I don't have any exceptions in package.license. Unfortunately I still can't enable the bindist USE flag due to some unsolved issues with openssl. I use deblobed linux-libre instead of gentoo-sources. I use LineageOS on my smartphone, which brings a few more non-free software with it. I also routinely run proprietary Javascript code on my browser when visiting most websites.

mindcrime 8y ago

In my personal life, I use almost exclusively Free / Open Source Software. At least when I'm on a PC, the OS and all the apps I use are F/OSS. My phone runs Android which at least uses an OSS kernel, but I do still use the closed source Google apps. I keep thinking one day I'll switch to something like "Whatever Cyanogenmod is called these days" but I haven't made that leap yet. I don't really miss anything. I'm not terribly picky about UI, and I've been doing things this way for about 15 years, so I'm pretty much inured to any pain I might feel from missing any closed source stuff. And frankly, I consider KDE to have a strictly superior user experience to, say, Windows, anyway. At my day job, though, I am stuck using Windows, Outlook, etc. :-(

vinayan3 8y ago

Richard Stallman has a good description of what the computing environment which has only free and open software is like. https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html One big issue is that streaming movies or tv shows might be tough. Some of the decoders used are closed source.

elviejo 8y ago

I haven't thought about this question in a long time... Because in a long there hasn't been anything I miss from the closed source world. On the contrary there are many things I miss when I'm forced to work on a Windows or a Mac machine. 1. A window manager like i3 or xmonad

cbluth 8y ago

I've been using Linux on my personal laptop since about 2006, and Linux on my work laptops since 2011, and cyanogenmod/lineageos on my phone since about 2012. I also have a little lakka.tv device hooked up to my tv. My personal preference, I love gnome3 and android. I prefer them over the osx/ios. And the interface on lakka is pretty amazing. I have everything I need, and I haven't looked back. I certainly own things like video game consoles which aren't OSS, but I like to buy them to hack them, just for fun, I guess. I use tons of non-free stuff like google docs et al, and whatever else is convenient, easy. Every macbook ive owned has had Linux on it within minutes after removing it from the box.

fturco 8y ago

I try to use free software only, but unfortunately that's not always the case. For example the BIOS of my desktop computer is proprietary. I also don't use a FSF-approved GNU/Linux distribution on my desktop because I prefer Gentoo. But I set ACCEPT_LICENSE="-* @FREE" and I don't have any exceptions in package.license. Unfortunately I still can't enable the bindist USE flag due to some unsolved issues with openssl. I use deblobed linux-libre instead of gentoo-sources. I use LineageOS on my smartphone, which brings a few more non-free software with it. I also routinely run proprietary Javascript code on my browser when visiting most websites.