Honestly, that trade-off is not worth it, particularly with browsers. People who do ignorant things are ignorant (note that I did not say stupid: they may be quite intelligent in other areas of life). Tools should do what their owners direct them to do, even if it is a mistake.
With apt, there is a bit of method to the madness: if one imagines that apt’s job is to do the thing the user requested and then deliver a correct system, then clearly essential packages can’t be removed.
But there is not a reason to prevent the user of the software from using the software in the way he wishes on his own machine.
Advanced users can modify the source code to disable things that get in their way. Anyone not capable of that is not capable of knowing when it is safe to turn off safety defaults.
Chromebooks at least get this one thing right. You can disable firmware signing, but only if you are comfortable taking the laptop apart to remove a magic write protection screw. That is something a scammer cannot easily convince a grandma to do.
I think chromebooks have moved away from screws to special key combinations for the most part. The screw is a good idea, but having to take apart the whole thing to get to the screw is a bit much.
> Advanced users can modify the source code to disable things that get in their way. Anyone not capable of that is not capable of knowing when it is safe to turn off safety defaults.
Modifying a morass of C++ source code is not nearly the same thing as writing an extension in Javascript.
With apt, there is a bit of method to the madness: if one imagines that apt’s job is to do the thing the user requested and then deliver a correct system, then clearly essential packages can’t be removed.
But there is not a reason to prevent the user of the software from using the software in the way he wishes on his own machine.