A better statement should be: you should remain vigilant and light on attachment to any banner. If an ill wind blows and you don't like it, it's time to move. Control your data- aspire to be a digital nomad.
Firefox isn't without it's own issues, recently. Google used to be viewed as a paragon once, too.
Once upon a time I think they were largely harmless ... but once they started leaning into profit over quality they went rotten in a hurry. Exactly why I'm concerned with mozilla's path.
I don't use the password manager in Firefox, what a terrible idea.
Use an independent password manager, something purpose-built.
And using Linux? Hahaha, right, right. Call me when there's a serious OneNote, or even more importantly, Excel competitor. (Or even a standard shell on Linux, or the same set of tools built in).
OneNote works on the web, but there's also Notenook if someone is looking for similar features with an app for offline access + End-to-end encryption and open source alternative. I've got it syncing to my Android, Windows, Linux and Mac clients without issue.
...or even more importantly, Excel competitor.
There's OnlyOffice which has a spreadsheet. Yeah it's not Excel which has existed for a million years, but it should work for the vast majority of users' basic needs. It may not work for your specific use case, but it is a viable alternative that exists today. If you want more online collaborative features (like the o365 version has) you can use CryptPad, which provides an end-to-end encrypted and open-source collaboration suite, including the web version of OnlyOffice Spreadsheets.
Or even a standard shell on Linux...
What does this even mean? Nearly every major Linux distro sets bash as the default shell, and if not the default, is probably already installed and called if needed. Not sure I understand the problem here.
...or the same set of tools built in
Stick to a single OS and you get the same set of tools built in? This is a strange statement to be making against a system that not only thrives on diversity but has lots of niche systems that require a myriad of default tools.
I do completely agree about not using any browser's built-in password manager.
I agree that using browser-based password managers is not a good idea, but everything else you said was willfully ignorant.
OneNote isn't that special, and you don't need Windows to use it.
There are half a dozen excel competitors that are feature complete (OpenOffice, LibreOffice, GSuite, Zoho, Gnumeric...)
All shells use the same standard tools, excepting a few bulit-ins (because most tools are external to the shell). Some shells have different syntax, but most of them share most syntax. In 90% of cases, the default shell is bash, or an offshoot (dash, etc), which are all descendants of sh, so unless you're using an extended feature set, scripts are cross-compatible.
Firefox Sync was purposefully built too, they didn't wake up one day to find it on the porch in a basket.
It syncs passwords, works on desktop and mobile and can do some other cool stuff — syncs tabs and bookmarks, alerts you to password breaches, send tabs from one device to another, lets you export your passwords etc. It's a good password manager.
It is not the software which can lack seriousness, but the developer and the user. One is proprietary where the developer controls the user's computing - the other is free software where the user is in control (free as in freedom).