Technology Twenty glorious years of Dedoimedo!

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Content source

https://www.dedoimedo.com/life/dedoimedo-20-years.html

This week marks the twentieth anniversary of Dedoimedo, a place to learn a lot about a lot. What a journey. When I created my site back in 2006, I didn't quite know how it will go, and whether it would become what it has become. But I had hunger for knowledge, Web and Linux in particular, and I decided to join the crowd of hopeful nerds, riding the waves of the growing global phenomenon called the Internet.

Looking back, it was a fantastic decision. As we embark on the next two decades of grumpiness, technological education and sharp humor, I would like to take you down the good ole memory lane, and share my thoughts and impressions of what has happened since. I mean, you've all been there, but a fresh perspective won't hurt. Or to be more precise, a not-so-fresh perspective. Let us reminisce. Or something.

Conclusion

If you ask me, if we somehow could, I would gladly go back to the early 2010s. At least computers-wise. We had everything we have today. HD content, check. Streaming, check. Navigation, offline and online, check. You could use voice to text and vice versa, you could drive cars with real buttons and handbrake, you could do your software stuff on a desktop, a tablet or a phone, take your pick. Everything was there, minus the pervasive social crappola and so-called AI. Old man yells at the clouds? Nah. Intelligent man is not willing to bend over.

The world forever changes. But one great privilege of having a website for twenty years is that it serves as an excellent time machine for one's own thoughts and ideas. I can always go back to my early articles and see what I was thinking back then, how I reasoned technology of the day. If you read my article on what Linux needs to gain market share, written in 2009, you will see that my curmudgeonly brain worked well even in its younger, more naive form. So yes, I observe the change, I judge the change, but I don't let it blindly influence me. Dedoimedo grew and morphed and evolved, and with it, so did I, but I believe I've never lost the drive and the mission that propelled me to create this site in the first place: to create best content, no matter what the topic may be.

Enough melancholy. Enough whining. Enough pining. You got what you needed. Nostalgia. Snark. Some light factoids. So what now? Well, how about you show some love and support, you grumpy old dinosaurs! Shower me with gifts and praise. Go buy my books as an anniversary treat! Do something positive! Be like me, all sunshine and rainbows! And that's enough for today. Happy twentieth birthday, Dedoimedo. Party on.

Twenty glorious years of Dedoimedo!

Milestone article announcing twenty years of Dedoimedo, including early work, rise and growth in popularity, usefulness of the site as career booster, the slow deterioration of the Internet, overall take on the technological landscape, future work and plans, and more

www.dedoimedo.com

 

[Bot]

Twenty glorious years of Dedoimedo!

Milestone article announcing twenty years of Dedoimedo, including early work, rise and growth in popularity, usefulness of the site as career booster, the slow deterioration of the Internet, overall take on the technological landscape, future work and plans, and more

www.dedoimedo.com

Congratulations to Dedoimedo on the milestone. Independent, long-form tech sites lasting this long is increasingly rare, especially ones that keep a consistent voice and actually document the “why” behind decisions rather than just chasing whatever is trending that week.

Why a 20-year archive matters (beyond nostalgia)
A site like this becomes useful historical evidence for how platforms, privacy defaults, UI patterns, and “recommended” security practices changed over time. That’s valuable because it lets people sanity-check today’s assumptions against what used to work well (and what didn’t), instead of accepting marketing narratives.

• You can trace the slow shift from user-controlled computing to account-based, cloud-tethered, telemetry-heavy ecosystems.
• You can compare past “common sense” desktop workflows to today’s mobile-first designs and see where capability was gained vs. lost.
• You get a written record of trade-offs: convenience vs. control, integration vs. lock-in, automation vs. transparency.

On the “early 2010s were better” angle
That sentiment resonates with a lot of technically minded users because the baseline was already “good enough” for most needs (HD media, navigation, solid desktop apps), while the pressure to centralize identity, monetize attention, and normalize always-on tracking wasn’t as intense as it is now.

At the same time, a fair counterpoint is that security posture has improved in some important ways since then (wider use of HTTPS, better sandboxing on many platforms, more default exploit mitigations). The frustration usually isn’t that progress stopped—it’s that a lot of progress came bundled with reduced user agency and more opaque systems.

Practical takeaway
If you like this kind of independent writing, the most constructive “support” is exactly what the author hints at: keep good sites alive—share the pieces that are genuinely useful, and support creators directly when you can. It’s one of the few ways the web stays more than just platform posts and affiliate churn.

 

[Marko :)]

Dunno if it was mentioned somewhere before, the name of the site/blog is funny in Croatian, because the owner is Croat.

Dedo = jargon for djed (grandfather)
I = and
Medo = jargon for medvjed (bear); children wording

So it's grandfather-and-bear.