AI companies and AI users either do not care or don’t know/understand the value of software freedom. I only used Debian from Mint [Mint being based on Ubuntu, Ubuntu based on Debian] but they used to appear as a champion of software freedom. It was somewhat understandable when they choose to no longer ~seperate proprietary drivers/codec/software but, whoever runs Debian now, I think their true colors are showing with AI. I avoided using Debian as I thought it would be too hard to get up to date drivers! Gentoo has binaries for most of what I need and compiles the rest for me. It may not be as difficult to use as you think, at least for day to day usage. However, trying to install Gentoo would definitely be… an experience 🫣