Yeah, the investigation writes itself. Have a few people with widely verying demographics come in and buy the same things, compare prices and see who gets overcharged for what. If you work for a news agency publish the findings. If you don’t, post a blog and make memes.
Ideally, this would eventually lead to state micromanagement of price regulation the way some food staples are, but on everything. Or a new wave of anonymous shopping.
I get that a lot.
Which only adds bas relief to the point. Linus has no personal or commercial motivation to get people to get the hot new trendy thing. Linux isn’t motivated by built-in obsolescence the way Windows and iOS are.
In fact, their higher iteration indicators are a symptom of a disadvantage of the operating system, not an advantage.
We don’t have a consistent convention as to what changes qualify for a version increment rather than update increment. A new kernel? A new interface convention? New icons for the mini-apps?
Windows 10 has more plug-and-play drivers than Win7 and Win8. It can recognize newer hardware and it can be installed natively from thumb drives. So a lot of features that were third party are now offical… long after I had access to the third-party libraries.
But then it combines the metro and the start menu. I never found a use for the metro.
Win11 is less operability and more DRM and more spyware.
For Apple and Microsoft, a new version is a new marketing season. It’s the same as the new iPhone, the new Subaru.
I assume Linux builds increment with significant operability additions, especially if they’re not fully backwards compatible. Since they’re released without charge the capacity to do more stuff is the only reason to upgrade to a new increment rather than preserving a stable version.
Maybe a customizable setting? Black screen with red border and a looping kittens video?
Syringe drivers exist that are on-line devices. I half expect the first IoT murder to be by someone hacking a syringe driver filled with something vital (say insulin) that’s plugged into the victim’s IV.
I don’t know if such devices are capable of being jailbroken and installed with Linux, but why not?
If you’re good at it you can teach a course.