It's really not a generational thing. Every generation has their nerds and they always are just a tiny minority.
The late Gen X/early millennials may have been an outlier because they were forced to learn to get anything working but also from those years most don't care about tech.
Apple does have a significant market share of 25-30% in Europe. Just because they avoided having to open iMessage (for now) because everyone in Europe uses WhatsApp, doesn't mean other Apple services are safe from regulation.
But I'm with you - it's more likely about (not so) privacy.
Nah, it makes sense. Apple really likes their proprietary walled garden, so the interoperability requirements trouble them deeply.
Debian 2.x (don't remember exactly) was my first attempt. But I don't actually count that because after annoying driver troubles (networking and mouse) and having to recompile the kernel multiple times I unfortunately lost interest.
Tried again with Debian 8 on my laptop and stuck with it until I moved 100% Linux just a couple of years ago thanks to Valve/Proton.
I sometimes update out of habit almost immediately after I updated. That's always a little disappointing.
To make it even more convenient, register to their mailing list and you get a heads up.
Debian, Mint, Arch (by the way).
Had Ubuntu as my main driver for about 2 years but didn't like Gnome and had more trouble with an Nvidia card than on Mint or Arch.
Fedora is top of my to-try-list but I'm not a distro-hopper, so who knows when I'll have a use case.
That is the reason for degrading proficiency. Not, that the tools are bad but the attitude, they have to be easy to use.
That almost everything "just works" is nice as a consumer but it won't make you troubleshoot and you will not gain technical expertise by using such devices.
I totally wouldn't be surprised if there originally were people being like "So what's this so-called 'cupboard' supposed to solve? Why isn't a regular shelf good enough for you?"
use sudo wisely, or not at all.
You also just work as root all the time, right?
Pendatry. Very widespread in tech.