As far as I know, it’s not entirely about some purism ideal they have in mind - the difference between the two nvidia camps on Linux is the functionality you gain with both drivers, and the proprietary driver is simply more restrictive, so, yeah, I agree that they have a point.
This is the reason I know very well that my next GPU is going to be an AMD one (given that their hardware has proper open source source by that time, that is). I bought by GPU back in 2017 or 2018, I think, a couple of years before using Linux and even considering it - had I known that today’s me was going to run LInux, I would’ve gone for an AMD GPU right away.
Even skipping the Nvidia driver debates, the AMD hardware has been a much more consistent and pleasant experience for me on Linux overall across several AMD-based laptops that I have installed Linux on. While I did manage to get things going on my desktop that has an Nvidia GPU, it definitely caused me more headache than I expected.
That’s what I was going to suggest as well. Basically, the planets and whatever is on the could benefit from a greater degree of procedural generation, even if as trivial as variable room layouts, but a deeper system (variable objects, contents, colors, designs based on the module manufacturer like with ship habs, etc.) would greatly remedy the repetitiveness, as with the current system, you’ve basically seen all the POIs or the type once you’ve seen one of them.
Planet surface is nice, though, because I agree with Bethesda’s idea of barren and deserted planets being much more prevalent than those that support any kind of life or even atmosphere. Elevation and scenery changes are also fine by me.
But still, POIs are oddly repetitive, even if somewhat numerous. They definitely should’ve gone for the more roguelike approach or something and use more proc gen with these.