[tech_ken]

An interesting read, I'm sympathetic to this viewpoint but I also feel like it's kind of an inevitable trend.

> Granted there are other Linux distributions like Gentoo, Alpine, Void, NixOS, etc. that are still conservative in some of these regards... However, these are not the popular ones, thus not the ones where the most development effort goes into.

Has this ever not been true of hardcore/transparent "Linux"? Yes Ubuntu is trying to be a free Windows-like, yes Gnome is pretty locked down. But alternatives still exist, it's just they're unpopular (and specifically for the reasons the author prefers them). Yes the big names get most of the development attention, but in terms of overall hours contributed are the smaller names actually getting less as an absolute number? Or just a percentage?

> In fact, the overall dumbed-down and closed-up -- sorry I meant to say "optimized for the enjoyment of our customers" -- Apple OSX seems to be a better alternative...

This seems to be meant as snark, but isn't this kind of the core tradeoff driving this whole dynamic? Sure simple and transparent software can be fun and useful, but much of the modern computing stack is simply too complicated to be genuinely transparent. Simplifying the bootloader won't make WebRTC simpler for an amateur to understand.