It is done in the open, but it adds complexity and it removes that made Unix/Linux great - composability, variety and replaces it with corporate introduced "stuff". And any distro is forced to support those additions because corps owning Fedora, Redhat, Ubuntu just rule the Linux world, and event Debian gives up.

As long as there are just few "normies" using Linux, it is safe from corporations adding their "security", "safety" etc.

The point is you NEED those things if you want wide adoption of Linux, which, in turn, is a necessary condition for commercial software to get ported over to Linux. You just can't have both. We need a middle ground I believe 2026 desktop Linux is exactly that: a good compromise.

You can still run devuan. I highly recommend it, though FreeBSD got really good over the last few years, and is even more insulated than devuan is.

I currently have one systemd infected machine, two devuan machines and two freebsd. Next step is paving the systemd one (it randomly craps out) and probably putting FreeBSD on it, but I’m on the fence. It’s a family member’s machine, and devuan is less change.