So I watched @Derek's video about #Linux becoming too complicated & limiting, and also saw @Brodie Robertson's response to that video. And this is what I have to say:

If you ask me, what I feel like Linux is kinda getting worse at is not #customizability, but its the consistency of that #customization, I'll explain what that means. At first this was not something I've payed much attention to before, but then I started helping out with this Linux distro called #Tromjaro and a lot of my work was done for fixing #consistency in theming. So what's the issue? By default in most Linux distros if you change the system theme to your liking then that theme will only be applied to around 50% of the apps, depending on your distro it could be either #GTK apps or #QT apps. So if you want to have consistent #theming across all apps then you'll have to install a new program (like qt5ct) and enable the same (or similar) theme there as well. Having to change your theme in multiple programs is bad #UX, and to make things worse most new users don't even know what QT or GTK is, so when half of their apps don't respect their chosen theme they'll think its an issue with the program itself and that its unsolvable, I know this because I've been there. Now I don't understand why most Linux distros don't try to fix this issue, because this isn't just about "customization" but its important for #accessibility too, people may enable a dark-theme because its easier on their eyes, or use a different font so they can read better. Anyway, the only mainstream distro I'm aware of that do try to sync themes between GTK & QT apps is Linux mint, they still don't sync the font or icon set but its still better than nothing. So coming back to TROMjaro, we wanted to properly fix this issue, and in the end we were able to sync GTK & QT #themes, system font, icon set (this one is important because if you use a dark-looking icon set on top of a dark theme then you can't see it properly), and we even fixed the theming for #flatpaks (the ones that do support external theming). So after all this I can say that libadwaita apps were one of the hardest to theme, these apps refuse to use the system #theme and instead show a light theme which sticks out like a sore thumb. Now there is an AUR package called libadwaita-without-adwaita-git which can be used to force the system theme on libadwaita apps, and this is what we currently use for TROMjaro. But this feels like more complicated than it should be, and as #libadwaita keeps evolving I don't know how long this AUR package will keep working.

Also there's one other thing I wanted to mention in response to your videos - customizability and user-friendliness don't have to be mutually exclusive. So despite doing all of these things to apply consistent theming across apps, we also added a custom theme-switcher app to TROMjaro that is easier to use for new users, it simply lets the user choose between a light and dark theme with various accent colors. Remember the issue with using dark-looking icon set on top of a dark theme? Well it appears like most people are not aware of the fact that they should also change their icon set when switching to a dark/light theme, so we made the theme-switcher handle this automatically for them. So if a user wants to have the ultimate customization power and apply some crazy looking themes then they can do so via XFCE's regular settings (and TROMjaro syncs the theme between GTK & QT), but for those who want a simpler user-friendly interface they can use the theme-switcher we made. Similarly we've made a layout-switcher app for showcasing different presets for XFCE that users can choose from, but if someone wants to make more customization on top of it then they can do so via regular XFCE options. So in some ways its possible to be user-friendly and customizable at the same time, at least to some extend.

I know I talked a lot about TROMjaro but honestly I'd be happy to see more Linux distros doing similar things, consistent theming for example would be a great UX for any #GUI distros in my opinion.