Even though the world of big tech is fully leaning towards the hype around LLM, there are plenty of other projects being built that comfort me in my interest in tech. The main reason I decided write this post is because of few projects I follow publishing their progression regularly giving me hope with the tech future they create in contrary to the one from a few crazy authoritarian billionaire.
Web engine / browser
The main one giving me hope is Servo, a web engine progressing rapidly which can bring an alternative to a dominant Chromium, and a drifting Gecko. Their story started with Mozilla, but it is now supported by the Linux Foundation Europe, even tho they are independent. They rely on Rust, which also helped the language reach today's effectiveness since they were early adopters and provided many feedbacks. I am hopeful to see them gain more momentum and hope to be able to use it in a browser or see it in action for another use one day.
I've also heard of Ladybird, but I'm not really following it.
OS / DE
I would not have written this blog post without hearing about AerynOS and Redox OS first, CachyOS and the COSMIC desktop. I am currently using CachyOS with COSMIC on my dev laptop, and I appreciate both a lot, the first one because they optimize my Arch (btw) install and take care of the complexity for me, while the latter offers a visually pleasant, responsive, and usually better experience than other desktops in my opinion, so it suits my use case more for this computer; I still use KDE Plasma on another computer for now.
Regarding AerynOS, I like the idea of an atomic OS that works like a rolling-release distro, combining the best of both worlds. Maybe they'll create a new norm in the future, who knows.
When I found Redox, I was actually wondering if there were any other OS being created with newer tools in case Linux as we know it would "fail" for any reason. The use of a microkernel rather than a monolithic architecture and keeping a UNIX-like experience are things I'm really interested in with this project.
Hardware
After decades of an hegemony of x86, and ARM looking at becoming the new standard for computing -- even if it was already the norm in phones and embedded devices --, I still look at RISC-V making progress now and then, waiting for its time to shine.
With Google slowly closing down everything with the AOSP, we can hope for the democratization of Linux phones so we have an exit plan. Until then, I can only recommend using GrapheneOS as long as it is available.
Programming languages
Before concluding, I wanted to mention a few programming languages being built, inspired by / trying to improve C/C++/Rust/Go/Python, because some people still see improvements. I'm not competent enough on this topic to know if it is actually useful, but I like the idea of experimenting new ideas.
In my watch list, there is (in no specific order): Zig, V, Nim, Hare, and Pony.
Conclusion
Now, imagine a new web browser based on Servo running on AerynOS/RedoxOS with the same philosophy and functionalities as CachyOS, and the COSMIC desktop obviously, wouldn't it be great? Maybe, maybe not, but I'd like to try it. Anyway, there are good things out there, let's keep the positive stories happening so we can build the tech we want, not the one imposed on us.