Today is the day 70 (or so) since I started selling 1-Click Linux, which is free software, released under GPLv3+ license. Yes, I do believe free / libre / open source software can be released and sold for money, just like DRM-free e-books. No tracking. And no freemium - a clean contract: you watch a demo then give me money - I give you a file. The problem is, I do not have a big follower base. Neither do I have a load of money to pour into advertising. And I honestly think that the whole advertising business is the reason behind much evil currently happening out there. The current figures are a couple visitors to the website each day, one in 20 of these wants to see the price, and one sale so far. I have no idea whether these are people or bots, but it is a data point. (The sale is an actual person though.) ...
A bit of history GIF is the oldest widespread compressed image format. Today, it is mostly famous for allowing animations in an image file, but I am not so interested in that use. Actually, it turns out this was the only image format ever supported by NCSA Mosaic. Your website must have a GIF fallback for all critical images if it ever wants to truly support old browsers. I’m not talking old as in old Chromium. I mean actual Mosaic, Netscape, IE, Netsurf, Dillo, Konqueror - like those you can try on oldweb.today. (You are probably not interested in supporting them, but this is a fun exercise.) ...
1-Click Linux alpha has been released just now! You can buy it now at a price of a T-shirt. I added some demo videos so that you know what you get before you pay. The bottom line is, you can download two files, click through a wizard, and watch your Windows PC reboot into ZorinOS with no settings tweaking or external storage media. You should definitely check it out, because I believe this will be the near future of OS distribution, because in 2026 virtually all laptops and pre-built PCs are coming with Windows preinstalled. Not to mention the hardware you already have. ...
Announcing 1-Click Linux: this time I made something so self-contained and so near the ‘finished’ state that I would like to sell it. Yes, I do believe free / libre / open source software can be released and sold for money, just like DRM-free e-books. With no tracking. The project is basically a nice-looking .exe that guides the user through an installation wizard and reboots to a live GNU/Linux system. I wonder if there is someone who would be interested in testing it, or even buying. ...
I have used many laptops so far, as daily drivers or otherwise. I have daily driven an old HP Compaq (4:3 screens era), a newer HP Compaq, a Lenovo and a Dell Latitude. Not a single laptop has ever failed me in so many ways as my Acer Swift 3. Other laptops I will not tell the story of the (more recent) Dell Latitude, simply because I only used it for one year. Suffice to say the only problem I had was a RAM failure and it needed a motherboard replacement because it was soldered LPDDR (avoid this thing). ...