I'd love if everyone switched to Linux and the walled gardens just died, but the most realistic outcome would be Microsoft and Apple having to up their game and improve their respective products. Right now they're driving hellbent for leather into OSaaS monthly computer subscriptions, eliminating use agency to the greatest degree possible, and exploiting every possible intrusion and usurpation of consumer privacy, vacuuming up every last bit of data and monetizing it to the greatest degree possible, without any concurrent return in value to the consumer.

The only way that stops is by having enough people leave that they change their behavior, and it's not sufficient to switch to the competition that is operating under the same perverted incentives under the same system with the same failure modes. No Windows, no Mac, no Chromebooks, no enshittified corporate quagmire of awfulness and despair.

The solution is simple - use Linux. Set your family up with Linux.

It's the year of the Linux desktop; it's never been easier or better, and it's never been more important to make the leap.

Mac OS comes with the purchase of the hardware. For mobile and tablets, yes, there is a strict walled garden. But I've been programming on Mac OS for longer than the age of this HN account, and even longer on Linux. In practice there's not much beyond the window manager and containerization that are impractical on Mac for every day programming compared to mainstream Linux distros.

The family computer is set up to boot into Ubuntu; booting into Windows 11 is the exception (games, iTunes).