Interesterified "oils" and tropical oils/fats, most notably palm oil.

And more sugars and salt.

And coming soon: a return to animal fats from factory-farmed animals who spend their whole lives stressed and sick.

Even in allegedly "plant-based" products (some of which aren't any more healthy than their animal-based counterparts to begin with).

Ultraprocessed food is really, really bad news. Much more so than most folks realize. So are factory-farmed animals.

I'm also fine with Linux distributions not appealing to the masses.

At the same time, though, I think there are a lot of things we could do better, and some of those things would broaden the appeal of desktop Linux to a wider variety of users, without detracting from its appeal to more traditional users like myself.

The kernel can typically run forever without issue, as can most mature services, if sanely configured. However, end-user apps sometimes can't. I would probably reboot every month or two even if I didn't do that already for kernel or toolchain updates (which are frequent for me, because Gentoo gives me the choice to remain fairly up to date if I wish).

But I've seen uptimes of many months, even years, on systems that didn't need kernel upgrades. The teamviewerd daemon always flakes after a couple months and no longer allows copy/paste, but everything else seems fine.

YMMV.

There has been slow but steady progress toward that goal for a long time now.

HTML/CSS/Javascript apps don't tend to care that much about the underlying OS, and it's possible for most well-written apps using modern, higher-level platforms (including but probably not limited to that stack plus C#/.NET and Java) to be ported to multiple architectures with, at most, relatively modest difficulty.

I use nothing but Linux at home, but at the office, I have one of the last remaining Windows 10 systems here. Everyone who's been "upgraded" to Windows 11 hates it.

We have a piece of software designed for tablets, based on WPF (the ONE major non-cross-platform thing in modern .NET), that ran perfectly before. The Windows 11 "upgrade" causes the on-screen keyboard behavior to be entirely non-deterministic, depending in part on what tablet model, whether or not an external display is connected, whether or not an external display has ever been connected, and numerous other factors we think we know as well as some we very likely don't. Users see this as a problem in our software that we need to fix, but it is a problem we did not have until Windows 11, and probably can't be fixed in our code due to lack of reliable APIs. It's probable that the only real fix will be long-term, and will be to do what we've started to do anyway, which is to slowly migrate many of our desktop apps off of Windows and into HTML5/JS/CSS.

I didn't move to a *BSD on account of systemd, but I did stick with a distro (based on Gentoo) on which it was not required, and that was part of the reason why. If not Gentoo, then Devuan would have been my second choice.

(Wayland also is not required; I would like to switch when I think it's ready, but as yet I don't, chiefly because XFCE has not yet been fully ported over.)

I'll try to be respectful. :)

While I agree that most "regular users" aren't a great fit for desktop Linux, your information is quite out of date. Ubuntu 10.4 is well over a decade old, and modern Ubuntu will install without difficulty on any supported modern hardware, as will Debian, Mint, and any other distribution designed for desktop use.

Also, arguably, "the year of desktop Linux" arrived as soon as Android and Chromebooks came out. They're not Linux as you know it, necessarily, but they are Linux under the covers, more or less, and they are proof that an end-user-friendly Linux is possible, although traditional users such as myself aren't crazy about the level of dumbing-down and choice-removal that would be needed in order to make it universally popular.

I for one am OK with the way things are playing out. I don't want Linux to be more popular if, in order to do so, it has to stop being Linux.

But my wish list: (a) Wayland is finished and somewhat de-fragmented (most compositors implement a sufficient API and in the same way so coders can code to it without relying on a specific desktop environment). (b) Systemd dies horribly in a fire. (c) We continue to have desktop environment options other than KDE and Gnome. (d) Most software that can become Web-based does so. (e) Hardware vendors finally figure out that desktop Linux, while maybe not the biggest part of the desktop market, is still well worthy of their support. (f) The recent moves away from software freedom get smacked down in courts all over the world. (g) We eventually standardize on more or less one of the modern packaging formats (AppImage, Flatpak, or Snap). (h) Python gets a modern packaging and deployment story. (i) People gradually stop using C and C++ where they don't belong; most end-user apps should use mostly higher-level, and safer, languages.

I'd argue that while both Windows and desktop Linux have improved over the years, Linux still has the slight edge in terms of reliability (in spite of systemd). It wins easily on the security front (again in spite of systemd) for multiple reasons, including that it does not attempt to phone home and sell your data, that most of the core of desktop Linux is open source, and that fragmentation has caused it to become a very difficult target to attack, though you're of course correct that dumb users can poke security holes through pretty much anything if they try hard enough.

Ironically, I think it's the cost issue that I think drives a lot of folks to Windows. There's a learning curve to Linux, and that costs money and time that many users and organizations don't want to pay, even though it can and should be viewed as an investment, and even though the Microsoft forced-upgrade and monthly subscription costs may end up costing far more over time.

I've used Linux desktops for almost 30 years now, and it meets my needs almost perfectly, and improved greatly for the majority of that time (though I view systemd as a big step backwards, and still haven't transitioned to Wayland yet).

However, I still can't recommend desktop Linux distros for most people unless they're willing to get a little technical, buy hardware that is known to work well with Linux, and realize that most Windows-only software will require either dual-booting or a VM.

My info may be out of date, but doesn't the Rust standard library contain tons of unsafe? Not that that would disprove your point, but it would certainly suggest that migrating away from unsafe may be a lot harder and/or less feasible in many cases, not necessarily having to do with calling code in other languages.

(Note: I am very much in favor of migrating from C and C++ to Rust where practical, so this is not a criticism, just a question.)

In my experience, slippery slopes not only exist but are quite common.

I agree that this most likely is not a good example. If this were to turn into a mandate, it would end most systems software development in the U.S., and shift it overseas, almost immediately. The backlash would be nearly unprecedented, and not one that a weak candidate is likely to want just before an election.

But how about all the debt ceiling increases, each of which, very predictably, led to the next debt ceiling increase, instead of what I'd argue should have happened, which would be to get discretionary government spending under control?

Or the ongoing normalization of sexual perversion since the mid-60s?

Well, first of all, I think you underestimate how "mean" parents can be perceived as, especially when they make decisions that their young people may not agree with.

Next, they get a great deal of peer interaction in their homeschool co-op, their various sports teams, their many homeschooled friends, friends from church etc. It is not and never has been true that homeschooling equals isolation from peers. It does mean that parents can have much more influence over who those peers will be. Which we do exercise when they are young. They increasingly get to choose that to a greater degree as they become older and earn greater amounts of our trust.

We do "push" our kids to try to achieve to the extent of their ability. But we try not to stress them out by pushing them beyond that. And since their abilities vary from one child to the next, one subject to the next, and even whether it's basketball season or not (a very big deal for 2 out of our 4), we also try to adjust the degree of "pushing" accordingly, taking their feedback into account but not relying exclusively upon it. This is more difficult to do in a more formal setting such as a large classroom, and that in fact is one of the major advantages of homeschooling. We don't need to try to enforce a "one size fits all" methodology at any level. We instead try and do what fits each child best, at each season of his life.

I was promoted a grade as punishment for having (at the time) a multisyllabic vocabulary. I continued to do fine academically, but, but being small as well as physically and socially awkward even for my age, I comically failed to fit in, and ended up demoted right back down again a few years later.

Many decades since, as a homeschooling parent, I am now very much aware that there is no "one size fits all" approach to learning or teaching. When people who don't know us ask things like "what grade is your child in," it's hard to answer because any of them might be in any of several different grades depending on the subject. We try to let them advance at their own pace more or less, unless they are struggling with a subject and need extra help.