alt Hacker News> They are caused by moral busy bodies who think they know better.
If you know better just hack it your way. Linux is an open platform. Nothing prevents you from gutting Ubuntu and making it your own. You can't say the same for Windows though.
So I guess is not a matter of monopoly of idiocy, but whether you can do something about idiot decisions when they are made. This is why an open platform will always win. It's just architecturally better for the end user.
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> If you know better just hack it your way. Linux is an open platform.
The GP already knows about FOSS. He uses OpenBSD and Guix and in his own words this is his "small, happy place".
Guix in particular is an excellent example of FOSS innovation.
>If you know better just hack it your way. ... It's just architecturally better for the end user.
As an end user I want the product/tool to serve me well out of the box, I don't have time to hack it to fix what I dislike about it on my own dime. That's what my job is for.
>If you know better just hack it your way.
While this might be technically true, I also think it's a lazy argument that ignores practical reality. It's basically a way to avoid any kind of accountability or self-reflection. Users aren't happy? If they don't want to make the change themselves, they can fuck off.
In practice, 99% of the time it's not worth the time and effort to fork and maintain a large project. Even in a free ecosystem, users get locked into specific products and technologies. This is why sane technical leadership and responsiveness to user feedback are important, even (especially?) in open source projects.