[aquaduck]

> Desktop Linux is more complex, more fragile, and more choice-less than 10-15 years ago.

More complex, sure. Bare ALSA was simpler than Pulse/PipeWire. But the benefit of the additional complexity is that nowadays, sound just works. PipeWire gives us flexible audio routing pipelines like Jack, but for all audio applications rather than just pro audio! And as a counter-example, the X11 to Wayland transition considerably reduces the complexity of the display stack.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with "more fragile", but I definitely disagree with more choice-less. Sure, I wouldn't want to run modern Gnome on a full-size desktop/laptop (we have MATE, Xfce, and countless minimal WMs/compositors for that). But modern Gnome is great on tablets. Non-systemd and non-glibc distros are out there if you're into that sort of thing. Flatpak, etc are available if you're into that - if not, nobody's forcing you to use them.

> But can you actually use them as a phone?

Yes, with effort and some sacrifices. The velocity is in the right direction - the situation is much better than it was a year or two ago.

> Without that, they'll also never get the things that people want their phones to do.

I agree that there needs to be a sufficiently large community that things get developed. But this doesn't mean we need billions (or even millions) of users.