Title: What happened to the "personal" in personal computers?
Date: 2019-09-03
Written on: Dell Inspiron E1505
Mood: Relaxed
Listening to: Windows XP - Welcome [0]

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  I'm sitting here, listening to the Windows XP welcome screen music from the
post-installation, just trying to relax after the hellish last couple of days
I've had technology-wise. Losing the PSU in the Dell XPS, the Mac Pro giving me
some scares, the Mac mini having problems... It's been a bit of a ride with my
anxiety.

  But the music has been making me think back. Around the time of Windows XP, I
was using Mandrake Linux as a daily driver. I'd move on to Madriva, Knoppix,
Kanotix (Miss this one), Slackware, Slax, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Fedora, eventually
settling on Gentoo... I used Vista before moving to Windows 7, and Vista wasn't
that bad, even early on, as long as you had the hardware for it.

  Then, after a little time on Windows 7, I got my first Mac: the Mac mini
mentioned earlier, running Mac OS X Mountain Lion. I'd falling almost as much
in love with it as I had Windows 98 and XP. Even while using Linux, I kinda
envied just how nice and simple XP was, and after trying Mac OS 10.8, I
questioned why I'd bashed the platform for so long. It had power tools like
bash and other terminal apps, but the GUI was dead-simple and friendly to
people who just want to use a computer without needing to know advanced
subjects.

  For reference, I had enough skill with Linux at the time to get a an Linux+
cert, and enough Windows 7 knowledge to get an MCSA cert, if I could have
afforded them. And even with that level of familiarity, I loved Mac OS much
more.

  Of course, these days, if you don't run the latest OS, people in the industry
will screech at you like harpies in attack mode, ready to tear your head off
for daring to do something /insecure/. Ready to attack you for what
applications you run, or what web browser you prefer. It's nothing new, I know.
I've watched "BBS: The Documentary" by Jason Scott, and I've heard the stories
of the Commodore/TRS/Apple trinity wars that caused so much grief for people.
But it's gotten a lot worse since then.

  You also never hear the end of it from people who will gladly harass you
about running Linux on a machine (just look at the endless comments on
YouTube), and the hate Mac users get in similar locations (one vlog video[1] in
particular comes to mind) is just...sad. And yeah, opinions are free to share,
but people like to take them /way/ too far.

  And thinking about all this, one question comes to mind: Where did the
"personal" in /personal computers/ go? Why aren't people allowed to just be
happy with what they use, rather than catching hell over it? Why can't someone
who /just/ needs Windows XP continue using it?

  (Why is it illegal for me to beat someone into the hospital using an 
/IBM Model M/ keyboard?</rant>)

  Of course, I'm sitting here on my Windows Vista laptop, typing all of this
out. Vista has been /dead/ for a little while now, despite the fact that it's
a perfectly usable OS. Pale Moon, FossaMail, OpenOffice, GIMP, Inkscape,
Pidgin, IceChat, MS Office 2007, Notepad3, OpenMTP, ClamWin, DOSBox, Inform7,
KeePassXC, Mumble, Quest, Putty, WinSCP, WinAmp, Zune, WyrmNet, QuiteRSS...
I've got plenty of applications that work just fine on it, even if there aren't
any Windows 7 drivers for me to upgrade with.

  It's /my/ computer, after all. As long as I understand the risks and
downfalls of running such a system, why shouldn't I use what I like?

  And to think, this came from a simple piece of music made to welcome people
to an operating system. Makes me wonder what listening to Onestop.mid[2] would
do... Hmmm...

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[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkvbAOgEKLI
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6qa4XTkI_I
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Oe3UdRn9rA