OK maybe you are technically correct which is the best kind of correct.
It just goes against every nerve in my body to categorize Chrome OS as part of Desktop Linux.

Oh so you can install KDE/Gnome/XFCE apps on Chrome OS and they will work?
You know the “desktop” in Desktop Linux means compatibility is on the desktop apps,and that goes way beyond terminal commands right?

Linux as an OS is generally meant as Desktop Linux, and it most definitely is in this context that is about desktop marketshare, Desktop Linux is mostly following freedesktop guidelines, which has traditionally helped standards on Linux a lot to streamline developments. So for instance XFCE/Gnome/KDE desktop apps can be run in all the different desktop environments. For instance also standardizing things like how tray icons work. Freedesktop is part of X.Org Foundation, and Chrome OS does not use X.org or Free Desktop standards at all. The newer Wayland to replace X is also an X.org standard.

So while Chrome OS is based on the Linux kernel, it is NOT a Linux OS in the original sense, a term that became popular decades before Chrome OS or Android became a thing.

If you include Chrome OS you might as well include Android too. As it can run on for instance Raspberry Pi and other mini systems, and could be used as a desktop system.

Chrome OS is a Linux kernel based OS, and not much more than that.
It’s somewhat confusing in some situations that Linux as a desktop OS doesn’t have a unique name, but it wasn’t a problem originally, as what some prefer to call GNU/Linux was made 100% for desktop use originally.

The Linux kernel is way way more widespread and successful than what we usually term Desktop Linux or GNU/Linux.

TLDR:
Linux OS, Desktop Linux, GNU/Linux are generally meant as the same thing.
Chrome OS and Android do not belong in that category. They are Linux based as in the Linux kernel only, but do not follow the standards of Desktop Linux.

Firefox isn’t looking much better, either.

False equivalence.
Firefox is CLEARLY without a doubt the better choice in every aspect that has to do with abuse of privacy and power.

As well as a human, and without fucking up because of stress.
Also my guess is these would be monitored by trained professionals.

The AI will (probably) be familiar with every possible issue that no human will be able to match.
I’m not sure what kind of “completely unexpected” situation is possible can happen, that a normal surgeon would handle better?
But I agree it would have to be a lot smarter than current LLM and self driving for instance. Like a whole other level of smarter. But I think that is where we are heading.

At some point in a not very distant future, you will probably be better off with the robot/AI. As it will have wider knowledge of how to handle fringe cases than a human surgeon.
We are not there yet, but maybe in 10 years or maybe 20?

OK, except the post indicate building a new garage to get rid of the unused car.
Kind of overkill IMO.

Being mindless about anything has pretty similar results, I don’t see the point of this?
Forget you have a car parked in your garage and it will get dirty over time.
Maybe not the best analogy, but if you don’t give a shit, things tend to fall apart.

Are you saying you don’t know when you install additional packages?
How does that work?

This doesn’t make sense to me.
If you install features over time, it’s because you want to use them, if you want to use them, it’s not bloat.
If it’s to try it, and it’s not for you, why not just remove the package again?

I can’t say for others, but my system definitely does not get bloated over time.
On the contrary, I remove preinstalled features I don’t use, when I get tired of seeing them updating.

they are definitely not doing everything they can to increase their conversion rate.

Oh you mean like prompting users to buy extra services all the time?
Yes they are actually doing exactly that.

Of course I do, but ChatGPT still has a free option. And the basis to compare paid subscriptions when there is also a free option stand IMO.
Without a good free option, how would it be only 5% who pay? It’s exactly the same as with Youtube in that regard.

The free option is a form of advertising and allowing people to get to know the service. With Youtube the free option isn’t really free, you pay by allowing advertising.
So by that comparison Youtube is actually the worse free option of the two. And despite that more people pay for ChatGPT.
So your argument that they are not the same, actually makes ChatGPT numbers even more impressive not less.

Paying gives advantages on youtube, just the same as ChatGPT.

That’s a weird editorializing of the headline, for an article that describes wide spread use, and a market of rapidly growing value.

For instance a sentence like these:

This is no longer experimentation; it’s habit formation at an unprecedented scale.

This rapid adoption drives real dollars: In the two and a half years since OpenAI’s ChatGPT introduced the public to generative AI, consumer AI has become a multibillion-dollar market.

One of the most surprising findings? Parents are among the most engaged AI users, turning to AI for everyday help.

Even ChatGPT, with its first-mover advantage, only converts about 5% of its weekly active users into paying subscribers

Considering there’s a pretty strong free option, 5% is not bad.
How many pay for using Youtube? IDK but my guess is that it is way less than 5%.
How many pay for using search? My bet is that we are in the thousandth on that. Yet search is profitable!

State subsidies and a huge protected home market.
But to be fair, they really made the most of it. So absolutely also talent.

The article says Mac sales are declining too.
Apparently most of the decline is people that are simply ditching their PC because they don’t need it anymore.

But we’re pre-dating the common distro hopping discussions

No we aren’t, Linux fora were full of them even before Ubuntu more than 20 years ago. Debian, Suse, Fedora, Mandrake, Mepis, PCLinux.
Distro hopping was always a thing people debated.

The rest of that sentence is a bit confusing, who are we? And how am I supposed to read minds? And going back was kind of where we started, because you claimed it was a new thing for Debian. Debian was definitely recommended to general users, for many good reasons. Stability and huge repository among them, but also user friendly install procedure, and good package manager, that handled dependencies way better than Suse and Fedora.

I think this points to the idea that knowing why an answer is correct is important.

If by knowing you mean understanding, that’s consciousness like General AI or Strong AI, way beyond ordinary AI.
Otherwise of course it knows, in the sense of having learned everything by heart, but not understanding it.

Debian was never talked about as a serious contender in distro hopping

Back in 2005 when Ubuntu was all the rage, the first alternative to Ubuntu was almost always Debian. Only later when Mint became a thing, that was also an obvious alternative, because it was similarly focused on being easy to use.