The advantage to Free Software is that you don't have to change everything with Windows, Apple, Adobe, or Google demand you do (unless they grab control of a FOSS project, like in Firefox's case.) There are a number of writers who recommend Linux and Free software only for that reason - that once you get a workflow going, you don't want to change it according to corporate whims.
> practically never requires its user to fire up a terminal window
This can be a problem. But it will be less of a problem with LLMs. We need to encourage amateur (and proficient) Linux adopters and users to lean on AI to deal with anything giving them problems. I had an LLM walk me through updating a .deb package in MATE to match HEAD upstream, and to do it in a way that would be replaced when Debian updated the package itself. This is something I've been carefully avoiding learning for a decade, and if I had taken the effort to try to learn, it would be weeks of research and I'd have messed up the system multiple times along the way. Instead, after a few false starts, I did it and gained the knowledge to do it again.
