Mozilla does spy on its users, just like Google. There are websites covering this topic in detail. That's why forks like ungoogled-chromium and Librewolf exist.

Google and Mozilla are big tech companies which rely on spying their users. Whatever Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, etc promote is likely to be corpo junk and not beneficial for the users.

And now I see you don't know how GNU/Linux even works. You don't need to boot from Live USB every time kernel is updated, you compile and install it from your working system. It is a big deal, because big tech is trying to get a grip on Free software community in every way they can. Linux was one of the few still holding bastions of freedom. Thanks to the GPL (even if it's the weak v2, locked in by Linus on purpose), there is a way out in the form of a fork, just like it was done with systemd.

And Gentoo, Kiss Linux, or simply anytime user decides to compile the kernel instead of downloading a binary. "And" we go back to my OP.

There are compile time dependencies. I don't want to install Rust, nor should it be a requirement to compile the kernel.

Read my post again. I said "dependencies", not source itself. I don't want to install Rust, nor should anyone be required to to compile the kernel. And yes, Linux *is* the kernel, usually used in combination with the GNU OS.

Hundreds of megabytes of additional bloat dependencies in kernel? No thanks. Time to make a Rust-less fork of Linux (no pun intended).

He sees browsers as operating systems, and likes to wonder aloud what "iOS for the web" might look like

LOL. How about what would web without all the spyware, targeted ads, JavaScript, bloat and all this nonsense about the "apps" would look like?

Spoiler: search for "Gemini protocol".