I skipped over those arguments because they miss the point. You're not going to get Apple tier caretaking from Linux distributions.

Nothing inherently prevents Linux from replicating those features. It's just that somebody's gotta put the work in to make it happen. That somebody could very well be you if nobody else cared to do it.

My laptop has fancy RGB keyboard LEDs. Manufacturer shipped a shitty Windows app to control them, as well as the internal fans. My choices were: either give up on those features or implement them myself. So I reverse engineered what I could and made a Linux program to control the LEDs. Threw it out there on GitHub just because and woke up one day to discover that not only did I have users but somebody else had independently built a GUI on top of it.

The idea is not to change Linux distributions into Apple tier experiences. The idea is to convert you into a contributing user who is capable of solving his own problems and making his own features. The idea is to elevate users from consumers to contributors who take ownership of their systems.

That's the only way you can ever be free of "they" and whatever "they" decide to impose on you. Being at their mercy is a dangerous position to be in. Forcing low contrast glass UI on users is a nonissue compared to that one time where they threatened to start automatically scanning everyone's devices for CSAM. There's really no limit to what they can do to you should you relinquish ownership of your machine to "they". That's what I want people to understand.