I think the days of understanding your stack top to bottom are gone, unfortunately, but at least with Linux I am not being spied on, bullied into installing updates I do not want, prevented from installing things I do want, and in general being treated as cattle.
I've gone back to running OpenBSD/FreeBSD on the hardware and relegating Linux to VMs only, with all the hardware pains that used to plague Linux 15 years ago. But at least my OS is predictable and reliable again, and doesn't patronize me.