Comment by paxys
3 days ago
It's perfectly fine to love Apple and Steam. They are both great companies and offer great products. The issue I have is in trying to extrapolate that love into labeling them pro-"software freedom", which is idiotic. Both these companies ship opaque binaries of their storefront and products. Their apps/games have restrictive DRM. You cannot install/register games without an account and internet access. They artifically limit resale/sharing/lending of digital goods. They are actively user hostile (such as not offering refunds until forced to by courts). Even the Steam Deck is full of proprietary blobs which would be illegal to revese engineer and reshare. Nothing about the experience is FOSS.
Again none of this is inherently bad if your argument is "I like the convenience and don't care about the restrictions". But don't delude yourself into thinking this is "freedom".
Name literally a single computer that does not ship with proprietary blobs while supporting DXVK. Bonus points if you can find a wireless networking chipset that isn't from 2011 to go along with it.
Your entire comment is splitting some pretty fine hairs, but I just don't know how anyone can play the "muh firmware" card in 2025. I don't actually know a single Linux user or even hardware retailer that ships blobless hardware, if that means they aren't pro "software freedom" then I guess nobody is. But I think we can define "pro" to mean something other than "hardline absolutist" in this instance.