Given how entrenched the major desktop and mobile platforms are, I've despaired in recent years of finding a future that is not just more of the same, ever growing layers of cruft, middleware, and technical debt.

But perhaps a silver lining exists in the industry's "AI" madness causing everyone to commit to utterly destroying the quality, stability, and reliability of their software and platforms:

Maybe there are some good opportunities here for folks who are interested in a fresh start.

@swetland I think so!

I don't want to be all "year of the Linux desktop", but as you say, there might be a unique confluence happening.

A) distaste for enshitifying proprietary platforms
B) better-than-ever FOSS options while reaching a level of "just works" that passes some threshold for a bigger set of users
C) a lot of perfectly usable but out-of-support-window hardware available to be repurposed.