Hello:

On 28 Jan 2023 at 18:35, Boian Bonev wrote:

> ... neither freedom nor choice in an obscure, mile long ...
Yes.

The worst of it is how long it has been there, right under Linux's
collective noses.   8^°

ie: practically the *whole* Linux environment.

> ... the majority of non-tech users will skip either reading or
> understanding it.
Exactly.
 
> ... relaxed, and still somehow acceptable condition ...
> ... is to forbid other stuff to depend on it.
+1
At the *very* least.

> ... the extreme but proper way - unofficial repos are the right
> place for it.
Yes, *that* would be the proper way.

Another albeit more tasking option would be to do as Devuan has done
with systemd:

Ban zeitgeist from the Devuan repositories and sanitize any
application that has zeitgeist as a dependency but can work properly
without it. 

But if it cannot be sanitized and *needs* zeigeist to work properly,
it should also be banned.

Best,

A.