So having convinced a bunch of my family and friends to set up accounts on Wire and install it, I may have lost the main thing that made it attractive (a #FreeCode desktop client for 32-bit GNU/ Linux where voice calls work properly). At what point do I just give up on trying to be a #SoftwareFreedom purist, and buy a 2nd-hand MacBook for comms (and video editing, and ... and ... and ...) :(
While I'm on a rant, it annoys me that I might have to retire my laptop in a year or two, even though the hardware is still working fine and dandy, just because even #FreeCode software seems to require more and more hardware power over time to do basically the same tasks. When I bought this laptop in 2010, it could run perfectly good voice and video calls over Skype on Windows XP! We must stop treating complex electronics as disposables.
@strypey The irony here is that 32-bit software tends to perform faster due to less memory footprint, with pointers being half as wide. We have 64-bit hardware that can, with no performance drop, execute 32-bit programs.
Am I the only one confused that we do not use 32-bit binaries by default? After all, the only time one *needs* a 64-bit program is to have a large address space...
@SuperFloppies bang on! This is why I agree with @sir that software development is being driven far too much by fashion trends and short-term, get-it-shipped mentalities, and not enough by computer science and engineering for the long term.