If you want to lessen the barrier of entry to Arch, maybe try CachyOS. It’s Arch based and very close to normal Arch, but has some conveniences. Might be worth a look. It’s also got it’s own CPU specific repositories (same content as Arch), giving even more performance.

Appreciate the heads up. I’m reasonably sure I’ve already uninstalled it anyway, but I’ll check tomorrow to make sure.

Yes, but my search data doesn’t leave my house. Also since my IP changed multiple times a week (not quite daily, but close), I prefer this to using someone else’s instance. There is some obfuscation to be gained by searching through a public insurance as well, but my insurance is still used by multiple people, not just me.

searxng (self hosted). But I understand not everyone can host something. There are public instances out there as well.

Wasn’t this many days ago already, or did it happen again? I remember reading this like 3 or 4 days ago as well.

So you’re basically saying “I don’t have any proof of any of this, but I’m scared so I’m scaring others as well”.

Your first point makes zero sense: it can’t be both “for profit” and have “no means of generating income”.

Their way of generating income is the reason they created the distro/OS in the first place: selling hardware. To my knowledge, they wanted to ship their mini servers (ZimaBoard) and later NAS-like devices (ZimaCube I think?) with an easy to use OS that can do all basic home server tasks. That didn’t exist, so they made one. They didn’t need to make money from the OS, it’s a catalyst to bring able to sell (more) hardware. I personally think that is a great way to use Linux as a company and contribute to the wider ecosystem, why does it scare you so much? They could’ve closed this of much more, but made it for available to everyone, on any hardware.

From what I heard, they did achieve their design goals. It’s a bit simplistic for me personally, but probably great for a beginner.

I get that enshittyfication is everywhere these days, but maybe don’t try to stop people from using things that haven’t actually seen ANY yet, just because they might? With no indication that they will, either.

4&5 might be fair points though, I for know enough about the details.