Platform Development • Re: Future of GTK2 and Pale Moon

Then... in all honesty, my response to that would be that you should accept your limitations and use what is provided, even if what we decide we can reasonably provide winds up not being to your liking.

In the bit of my post quoting Andy Prough, I sketched how I would treat the moot case of Flash failing in Linux if it were to face me. The methods I described are ways I could handle within my limitations. Other possibilities could include, off the top of my head, hiring somebody to provide NPAPI-compatible builds for me, or if I really felt out of options and forced to it, sticking with the last NPAPI-compatible versions both of Linux and of Pale Moon for Linux. In any case, such a failure would obviously not be your fault in any way.

That's the situation a lot of people are in. Maybe their computers are too old to build a UXP application, maybe it stresses them out, maybe they suffer from cognitive decline and can't do it now even if they would have been able to do it years ago. There are going to be a lot of sad stories in there...

You understand. You really do. Ensuring that you do was my purpose in describing my own position. I should likewise apologise if I seemed to wish to make you feel guilty in my earlier post. I knew my phrasing was poor, but could not think of any better.

At some point, we have to look out for ourselves. Hopefully that doesn't seem insensitive?

I do not want you to go mad, either. I understand.

Maybe you and a few others see more people using Linux as a victory, but for me? All I'm thinking is... great, more previously happy Windows users of UXP will see how much worse the Linux version is… But dealing with Windows people that have "gone Linux" to get away from Windows 11? That's what I really don't look forwards to...

I admit I am awkwardly near that class. A close friend, the one who just changed over, is such a Windows 11 refugee. In my case, Linux has permitted me to keep away from Windows 10 and 11 in turn, so I have always been able to look on them aloof from afar. This line is most revealing:

They're historically Windows users, which means they are used to first-class service and backwards compatibility, but now they're on Linux, a platform that pushes "upgrade or die."

Speaking, of course, as a layman, my perspective has been upside-down. Windows 10 was, and Windows 11 is, unfit for my use (among other reasons) because of their own ‘upgrade or die’ mentality, chiefly due to forced updates. The long-term releases of at least some Linux distributions, as long as the better Windows versions, led me to think of Linux as the more patient of the two, as long as one kept away from bleeding-edge distros like Arch. Over five years of continuous Linux use later, I can feel more often how many developers tend to neglect even slightly older editions of the same distro, even if they remain in long-term support. I now see the error of my first impression.

Since Windows remains intolerable and shows no signs of ever getting better, what is there for me in years to come? In the last few days, I have been thinking to myself that I should purchase a Raspberry Pi 400 or two to keep on hand as spare computers in the event this one fails. Assuming I am running Debian 13 on it, that could carry me securely to 2035. What then? So much depends on the precise conditions several years hence which are impossible to predict. Maintaining the software I like against an ever more hostile development mainstream is something I can only realistically address day by day, month by month, year by year, as problems present themselves. Your efforts help make the way easier for me, and you have my deepest thanks for this.