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Comment by ilaksh | Hacker News Reader

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On Linux you get to have the “fun” decision of which UI toolkit to use, and pretty sure neither WebkitGTK nor QTWebengine support passkeys or ad blocking extensions anyway, and I doubt more obscure toolkits somehow have more featureful webviews. This might be one of the worst examples of why you should buy Linux. It’s a case of having good building blocks on macOS that are easy to implement but have some restrictions, vs having shitty building blocks (if at all) on Linux.

A non-Apple solution (without these restrictions) could also be implemented on MacOS. I don't see why this makes using Linux computers more compelling. WKWebView is simply a convenient solution I guess but it could have also be implemented through CEF for example.

As I see it, if I was using a Linux computer I wouldn't have access to a terminal with such a feature at all.

Because browsers built in terminals in Linux do support adblocking extensions?

Because of the restrictions apple place on the computer that i purchased.

It's not a restriction of the computer. It's a restriction of the API they provide. You can simply use another solution and don't have that restriction.

Yeah. Fully agree.

I am this close to throwing away my MacBook and migrating back to sane Linux. For the last 20 years.

When you find "sane Linux" could you do a write up for me? Ta!

Not Ubuntu anymore, sadly. I have tried Debian after like 15 years pause and I loved it so much more. Note: we're talking server-side Linux here. Desktop wise I would stay on Ubuntu.

Debian has been my attempt to desktop linux (in the olden days, Slackware!), but for the server I've always preferred OpenBSD.

Yes, and I am more convinced that the market for non-iOS and non-Android mobile devices will grow.

Not sure if its going to be GrapheneOS, or Linux — But we can witness the growing trend of privacy-focus — especially after AI being introduced on the OS layer — grabbing recurring screenshots, uploading to clouds, and essentially destroying E2E encryption.

It'll grow, but its share of the market probably won't. People don't care. Anyone who cares enough to do something is a minority of a minority.

It is becoming very expensive and difficult as the moats these companies have been able to build are enormous.

One upside I see is that phone hardware slowed in innovation and most changes are now software. This allows a new comer to build a phone over 2 years and have specs that are still good enough. This was a huge issue back a few years ago when a "kickstarter" was created and two years later the phone was unusable because of the poor hardware specs.

I'm dreaming of that as well. But non-Android will always be against the chipset manufacturers not giving any documentation or software to anyone except NDA'd companies that follow their reference implementation exactly.

Google is also busily planning to kill sideloading and changes to the OS one step at a time.

Also, Graphene is Android. Just a nice distribution of, for pixels.

The market you describe only exists if there's a wide swath of people who are informed enough about their data privacy that they care enough to act.

Look around. This isn't going to happen, unfortunately.

I think you are too hopeful. I doubt the majority cares, will know about it, or even believe it. They will not care until it bites them in the ass and they know why it was.

Still waiting for it at the common computer stores, unless you mean something with ChromeOS/WebOS/Android as Linux distributions.

I mean, the developer chose to use Apples limiting browser, that was a choice not a requirement.

Did he have a choice? Is there an non Apple API that could be used here?

Yes - Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) as used by some popular applications e.g. Spotify and Steam.

Personally I am completely uninterested in using this feature, but I really like iTerm2 overall.

Of course he did, you arent forced to use anything Apple provides you on macos (or even ios these days).

haaaaaave you looked at Firefox/Chrome recently?

PS: I agree.

what is a linux computer

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