Technology

Politics is the science and art of organizing, constituting and managing a state and the direction of public life. Expressing these directions represents a power, a duty and an honour, and even though the common belief behind the political participation is that it is enough to vote during the elections, referendum and political initiatives to be part of the political participation niche, it is also possible to argue that there are multiple and diversified ways to make a political choice. One of the latter is the deliberate choice of the technology we use every day. And the everyday use of the technology starts from the personal computer and the operating system that runs on it. Operating systems not only shape and govern the way we interact with our material hardware but also the way we interact with institutions, private entities and peers.

Choosing an operating system means not only choosing the stack of our virtual life, but it also means adopting a particular perspective, prioritizing certain needs and choosing the way we interact with technology. Making a political use of the technological power means choosing to change the direction of our computing life, gain consciousness on the alternatives and in a way that is equivalent to voting for a party or another, with the discussions, the drawbacks, and the advantages that come with it. This is the power of not letting others choose for us. This power of choosing comes with the necessity of observing the alternatives, and if OS producers are like parties, each of these parties is bringing a priority or an issue to solve. Microsoft, Apple, RedHat and other vendors explicitly state the issue they are trying to solve: Productivity.

But other parties have other issues and other priorities, what if productivity wasn't the most important issue to solve for some? Are there any entities, producers, or institutions with other priorities that can drive the development of a distribution?

It is impossible to analyze the multiple implementations of the human perspective in this wide spectrum. Here, we tried to analyze the distributions based on the purpose that drives the development of the distributions. We hope it might entertain you and if we are lucky, even inspire you.