This is actually terrifying. Switching to Linux will help us for a while, and the community can take us a long way, but eventually the hardware in physical PCs won’t be able to perform basic functions. Maybe it’s because cloud PCs use vastly more power and web designers inefficiently update to a web 4.0 that won’t be accessible on older hardware – this has happened before. Or it’ll be because the cloud PCs have access to Wi-Fi cards or a new technology entirely to connect that physical hardware won’t have access to – already a standard practice with cell phones’ arbitrary gsm phaseouts.

A phaseout of physical hardware would also entail a phaseout of physical accessories, so you can’t data-horde your way out of this one unless, maybe, you invested in the now-rare M-Disc format and the drives that make them work. You can buy external offline storage for a while, but eventually it’ll all get bought up on the used market or otherwise fail in 5-10 years after the last hard drives get made for consumers. Eventually you will lose all your files and have no way to back them up. No Jellyfin server for movies you legally ripped, no GOG installers for games you legally bought, no music library or ebooks either, they’ll all be gone, stolen, so you buy it all over again in perpetuity.

Our only hope, really, is small businesses continuing to build physical PCs with equal power as the cloud devices. But would parts manufacturers let them? The current situation with data centers, SDDs, and RAM shows that parts manufacturers are increasingly only interested in selling to other large businesses. Consumers can’t boycott that.

I fully expect to be unable to access my bank or make appointments or get meaningful employment if I don’t switch over in 10 to 20 years.