Sure, but there’s Linux features that use TPM too, although you probably don’t need them in a home environment.

It was a feature built in to the web browser, providing a website, file sharing, a music player, a photo sharing tool, chat, a whiteboard, a guestbook, and some other features.

All you needed to do was open the browser and forward a port, or let UPnP do it (since everyone still had UPnP enabled back then), and you’d get a .operaunite.com subdomain that anyone could access, which would hit the web server built into the browser.

This was back in 2008ish, when Opera was still good (before it was converted to be Chromium-powered). A lot of people still used independent blogs back then, rather than everything being on social media, so maybe it was ahead of its time a bit.

Depends on if you use any security features that require a TPM. If not, the older chips are fine, or some motherboards allow a separate TPM chip to be added.

For example, my employer requires TPM 2.0 for both Windows and Linux systems, since they store most encryption keys and certificates on it - including WPA2-Enterprise key for wifi, 802.1x key for wired Ethernet, SSH keys (in some cases), LUKS key for full-disk encryption on Linux, Bitlocker key on Windows, etc.

For home use, if you don’t use any of those features (or require strong encryption for them), the main thing you’ll miss out on is support for Windows 11, which is fine if you’re using Linux.

I’m sad that Opera Unite failed. It was the closest thing to self-hosting for regular non-technical people.

it lacks the magical TPM chip that Win11 demands.

How old is it? TPM 2.0 has been standard equipment for nearly ten years now. It’s disabled by default on some systems.

Intel Core 8th gen and above, and Ryzen 2000 series and above, should all have TPM 2.0 built into the CPU (fTPM)

I haven’t seen any bloat on it, no ads in winkey menu

If you’re in the EU, that’s probably why. I think the bloat is only for non-EU users.

I can’t even get push notifications working.

Which browser? Safari is notorious for having a lot of bugs around push notifications, but Chrome and Firefox should both work.

I don’t have any knowledge about this in particular, but as someone with experience working at big tech companies, you’re missing the most likely reason:

4. Everyone who worked on it was reorged to higher priority teams, and nobody is left to maintain the apps

A lot of teams are only 3-6 developers, an engineering manager, a project manager, and a designer. Other roles like content design and QA are often shared across lots of teams. Developers with experience building native apps might be needed on other projects.

And they harm platform consistency, etc.

Unfortunately, a lot of major apps aren’t consistent any more. Each app uses its own design language and its own UI widgets, rather than using proper native ones. Often they’re no better than web apps. I hate it and would rather just use a web app instead.

IIRC the WhatsApp app is a native Windows app using C++ and XAML, while the Messenger app is a React Native app.

You can still use the web version.

WhatsApp and Messenger are the #1 and #3 most used messaging apps in the world. (#2 is WeChat)

In Australia where I’m from, Messenger is the most popular by far.

You can still use the website. This is just talking about the native apps.

Definitely going to fill this out once I get some free time. What will the data be used for?

A lot of people either don’t want to pay, or can’t pay (eg people in developing nations with very low income). I agree that UBI would help, but we’re a long way off from that being a standard thing in one country, let alone worldwide.

The only real alternatives to ads are either paying for the content, or having someone else pay for you. The latter is the case with something like PeerTube - someone else is covering the cost of the server and bandwidth without asking you for payment, and the creator doesn’t get money from you just watching the video.

Had what in videos?

Buying albums is great because you can host them on your own Plex server and use Plexamp.

(or something like Jellyfin, but IMO Plexamp is still the best app available for streaming your own music collection)

It’s probably the most popular music streaming service at the moment.

You could say the same about any social media site really.

The whole point of social media is to communicate with other people. Facebook is the largest one, so if you want to contact a business or person, they’re more likely to be on Facebook than any other site. Probably the main exception are younger people (and companies run by them), where they’re more active on TikTok and Instagram.