By advertising outdated or hard-to-use systems, the FSF advertises itself as irrelevant. It's a PR failure.

To continue with the metaphor: if the lighthouse appears unreachable, or advertising something people don't want, it will be ignored.

Perhaps they can improve said "advertising" by grading HW and distros instead, and indicating for each system how the grade could be improved.

vrms (virtual Richard M. Stallman) is what your asking for. Go install it, it has been packaged in most distros for decades.

Additionally, crashing into lighthouses with your ship or personal watercraft is considered a bad thing. Lighthouses are usually unreachable by water, they even have bouy perimeters to delineate where the shallows start around them to discourage getting too close/exiting navigable waterways.