Honestly? It is.
Getting a understanding of what you do is something that is moving towards “lost arts” territory regarding everything computer related. Yeah, you will not get the solution to your problem THAT FAST, but if you find out why the thing you want to do did not work and understand how to make it work you will benefit in the long run.
Do “the stuff” on the server, only serve HTML. In my first job we build a whole webshop with very complex product configurators that would today even run perfectly fine in dillo.
JavaScript is needed to actually build anything useful
Tell this to the people who build things you would call today a “Webapp” with CGI written in C.
If you only use software that is created by people you like… well… i guess your only choice will be an abacus…
In reality, what Chromebooks provide is a reinvention of the good old mainframe and terminal principle. In theory (like my recent - half joking - 9front comment) this is something that would be really easy to set up with nearly all Linux systems and especially immutable ones.
My take would be:
Put an sign up / sign in form as a “first boot” message in a distribution of your choice where you can specify (or have pre-filled by an organisation) a central server (could be something fancy like Nextcloud or something simple rsync based) where your whole profile folder gets synced to. After that: If anything goes kaputt just roll back the sync. Or “powerwasch” (to keep the ChromeOS terminology) the system to a clean state and re-sync your home folder.
In theory something that could all be implemented with a little scripting in an afternoon.
9front (with enough volunteers and a modern browser) could be exactly that.
I use Devuan and TDE because the setup is so incredible boring and dusty that i do not have to get acquainted with anything new (SystemD, Wayland… whatever hipster WM is currently cool) and keep working with the tools i like.
Well, look at it the other way around:
Those niche places act like a filter, pretty much alike as the whole internet was about ~20 years ago. Yeah, there may be fewer people around, but those people tend to be quiet a bit more interesting.
Nah, “the rest of us” is ruining the internet by following the people in the top of the trash pit.
You know… nobody is stopping you from self hosting, building a website or digging a gopherhole?
I - as my personal opinion - think he is more a case for the 2nd amendment…
So, let us part with this few last words from me i write without wanting to anger you, just to with the hope you may contemplate about: “In todays age there is nothing apolitical. You are either a part of the solution… or of the problem”.
Dead broke son of a low middle class family. …in a western country, especially in the US.
Yeah, that IS inherited privilege. You realize, that a low middle class american family is still in the uper ~ 10 % of currently living humans?
I had an account on reddit, about five years old until I finally decided to leave it because i spend an ungodly amount of time there. Knowing myself and my habit to flake on self set goals I thought out the ultimate strategy to keep me from coming back: Over a couple of weeks I intentionally posted atrocious stuff on my main and my two alt-accounts to get me permabanned and burn every single bridge.
For now it has successfully stopped me from wasting time there any longer.
Well, Brave is -regardless of the companies decisions- still a damn good browser with many build in essentials (TOR, IPFS, Bittorrent…), so, while I PERSONALLY don’t use this anymore (currently I use an heavily patched suckless surf and Dillo) I don’t see much wrong in including this in a distribution especially catering to users switching from windows.
Well, for me it would be the setup i am now using since about 15 years:
WM: flwm Filemanager: ROX-Filer Background: feh
… and a ton of tools i accumulated over the yesrs
Well, I personally have a soft spot for the gopher protocol and the community that formed around it… it’s in a way the better internet