Absolutely does provide a RAD front-end. It's actually a spectacularly well-provisioned development tool with which you can build Gnome/KDE/terminal apps, and even provides a web forms engine for deploying much the same apps via HTTP.
Its only real issue is that it's a great tool for client-side-first RAD development in an era when much of software development has moved to web-side-first.
GAMBAS is a free development environment and a full powerful object-oriented
language and development platform based on a Basic interpreter with optional
just-in-time compilation, as easy as Visual Basic™ was.
I worry about this too. I wonder if this same fear was felt by those who lived through the shift in Western Europe from village to industrial town life two centuries ago, and those who likewise lived through the era of post-war growth and leveling of society towards the expanded middle-class into the cut-throat selfishness of the Reagan and Thatcher-era economic rationalism which would in turn foment today's populist backlash.
You state: "My advice as a Linux user of 32 years for normal people is to buy a Mac."
And as a Linux user since the the MCC Interim distro[0] was made available through the floppy-distribution network in 1992, my advice is for most normal users to begin the process of migrating to Linux.
Why? Because even if the Mac has some current advantages over Linux for some normal users today, in the long run, Apple cannot ever be trusted any more than Microsoft can. If you believe that they can be, you're delusional. Whatever enshitifaction process Windows has undergone, whatever further reductions in user rights and freedoms Microsoft has introduced since it became platform hegemon, Apple will do the same. This is almost a law of nature.
No, it is time for everyone to understand that in the long run, if we want a free and open society, the only way that that can be achieved is through free and open software. And as software comes to dominate the operation of society, then this becomes critical.
So, the sooner most every normal user bites the bullet and begins the migration to Linux, the less painless it will be for them in the long run, and the safer for humanity.
Re: "The Hardware Root of Trust and the binary blobs would still be compiled by a firm that Western governments view as a fundamental supply-chain risk."
Sorry to break it to you, but all of the US hardware firms have now fallen into this same trust-abyss. Trump's USA is now seen in many parts as as big, if not a bigger, digital sovereignty threat as China's communist party is.
Re: "Europe is not doing fine: Europe is definitely a declining, unstable (lots of far-right vs far-left parties opposing themselves in elections in many EU countries now) empire."
If this is reality in Europe, which is perhaps likely, then by comparison, the US has devolved into failed-state status. Better a slow decline than a catastrophic fall into the constitutional/regulatory/legal/technological/scientific abyss.
Even if Europe has insurmountable problems, its best move forward is to decouple strategically from the US, and these days, all things strategic are underpinned by information technology. The fact that Europe (soon to be followed by Canada, Australia and New Zealand) is heading down this path is why the US has hit the panic button[0].
Re: "The US is the US and in three years there's going to be another president. But the EU's problems are much deeper."
The US may have another president or even another style of president, but that wont stop this migration away from American technological/strategic hegemony; because at this level and at this scale, complete trust by former allies, once lost, will never be regained. The US century is now over.
Thankfully open source software is there as an alternative to that US software. I guess it's no co-incidence that LibreOffice and Linux both have their roots in Europe.
OpenBSD and FreeBSD are great. This is coming from someone who used BSD 4.2 on a Vax 11/780 in the mid-80s. They don't lack in terms of 'technical architecture'.
What these dialects of the Unix operating system do lack is a licence which ensured their success.
Linux won in the end as much from its copyleft licence as from its development methodology or personalities involved.
The thing about copyleft FOSS however is that the code is almost certainly available, can be vetted by any nation, and accepted into any digital sovereignty framework.
If what we were talking about here are proprietary (or "closable" non-copyleft) codebases atop proprietary protocols, then yes, we're doomed.
You say: "My concern at this point is what the picture will look like with embargoes around software development and FOSS"
Can you elaborate on this point?
To my mind, there is no better warranty mechanism for digital sovereignty than FOSS, even if that means each nation has to fork the software tools that they're embargoed from.
From the fine article: "$12.2 million, representing a 149 percent increase."
One wonders just how much of a price hike - or how much of a digital sovereignty threat from the Trump regime - it would take to have the Australian government public sector shift to alternative solutions, like this one:
Re: "Or can I use the built-in Software Manager (FWIW, I really like the one in Mint, except when stuff isn't available on it.)"
I think this (built-in Software Manager) is probably the right track for most normal users. Last time I checked, the Debian software repo had over 120,000 packages, so for most normal users, the bulk of what they need is likely there and thus likely easier to install than apps on MacOS or Windows. My usual track record for installing a new desktop for family members, including the top 100 apps they likely need, is under 30 minutes for Linux. The last time I tried this with Windows, it took days of effort and frustration and to some extent opened the computer up to security risks because of the multitude of binary sources I had to trust.
But yes, once you start needing specialist software, then your-mileage-may-vary. Having said that, apps like Blender are already in the Ubuntu repo, which should mean they are also in the Mint Software Manager, and thus a single-click away from installation.
In general, I would consider Linux to be the easiest platform to install software on for the most common 80% of the software that normal users need. It's certainly the easiest to maintain and update that commonly used software of any of the mainstream desktop OSes.
Again, I think a lot of the mismatch of norms & experiences comes down to what someone becomes accustomed to. If you're accustomed to downloading an installation binary (EXE/MSI) and double-clicking that to install on Windows, then you can become accustomed to downloading an installation binary (DEB/RPM) and double-clicking that to install on Linux (viz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOPQPrzmnw0).
Re: "if you want Linux to win with non-experts, it needs to target being a better experience for non-experts than the alternatives"
I agree in broad terms, but let me re-capitulate this. Which OS do you think would offer a better experience for non-experts when installing on bare-metal? By my reckoning, Windows is a nightmare to install afresh on random hardware, and MacOS wont work on most-all random hardware. Users think that Windows is easier because they almost never have to install it from scratch.
Also, do you factor in the ever-increasing nuisances (AI, ads, spyware)[0][1][2][4] that Microsoft and Apple are injecting into their operating systems, and the move towards digital sovereignty which is accelerating in every nation outside of the US in any computation of what is a 'better experience'?
Re: "Or maybe the operating system should just work reliably for (at least) the basics?"
So, out of curiosity, if I tried installing MacOS on any of the 15+ computers I have at home, what are the likely chances that this "operating system should just work reliably for (at least) the basics?"
I can tell you that my success rate with Linux is 100%.
Or, you could help accelerate the move away from proprietary platforms, even if there is a small hit to you personally. This is how we help save society, rather than having others do all the work, no?
In the end, it's in your best interests that Linux and open platforms improve in the direction you want them to, and the best way to achieve that is by joining the effort now.
Re: "I gave up and have been using a MacBook ever since lol."
I'm curious. What will you do when Apple too starts shoehorning AI into every part of MacOS and when Apple introduces increasingly unpalatable or government-mandated surveillance functionality like Microsoft is doing with Recall?
I can't tell if you're missing the key information or merely trolling.
Steam on Linux went from 1.4% at the start of 2025 and hit 3.58% at the end of that year. That's a 156% increase in device adoption in a single year. Most platforms would be happy with such growth.
The more important point is this: look at the growth trajectory. Windows11 and - I'm being told they've changed their name to Microslop, can anyone confirm? - are on the nose. Linux growth at the current rates would see a ~10% adoption rate in 2026. That then establishes a serious threat to the current gaming platform hegemony.
Why do you classify the BSDs as Unix and not Linux as a Unix? Linux has about as much right to be called a Unix as the BSDs do, as those BSDs have had to be stripped of pretty much all Unix code in order to comply with the AT&T v. BSDi court case from 35 years ago[0].
Further, the BSDs were more popular than Linux at a point in time. There's a very good reason why Linux won the platform wars, and a very large part of that reason is because of the GPL - a difference with the BSDs which wont be going away.
Its only real issue is that it's a great tool for client-side-first RAD development in an era when much of software development has moved to web-side-first.
Enjoy