by Vivienne Pratfall on free software, fiscal reality, and the specific Hackney version of the French budget crisis
By Vivienne Pratfall for Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
Hackney, Monday. France is on Linux. I am on a very old MacBook. Life is choices.
Jake told me this morning that France has abandoned Microsoft Windows because they cannot afford it. Jake knows this because he actually reads technology news, which I only do when it intersects with politics, which it now always does because everything intersects with politics, which is either proof that politics is central to all human experience or proof that I have lost the ability to read anything recreationally. Unclear.
France is moving to Linux. This is, objectively, the right decision made under financial duress, which is also how I made the decision to stop buying coffee from the good place and start buying it from the slightly sadder place. I am not France. But I am making the same structural choices: identify the expensive thing, find the functional alternative, tell no one how much this cost you in dignity.
The Hackney Technology Audit
I own: a MacBook from 2019 that makes a sound during charging, a phone that I dropped and which has a crack I have not repaired because the repair costs more than I am willing to admit to myself, and a printer that has been offline since last November and which I treat as furniture. I am, by the standards of Hackney young professionals, average. By the standards of France, I am extravagant. By the standards of the Home Counties, I am basically destitute.
According to The Guardian’s technology desk, Linux is increasingly viable for everyday users. Jake has offered to help me migrate. I have said yes, in the way you say yes to things that are good for you and that you will not actually do for another eight months. France moved faster. France is in a worse situation. I respect the urgency.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
