Raising an exception would be standard practice, IMO. A library should not dictate how an application behaves. Let the application handle it.

So, did you provide a link or am I supposed to search for it like a caveman?

Not seeing any links to a page, what’s up?

For example today I wanted to add a “start menu” shortcut to a program I had downloaded.

I get what you’re saying, but this is like “I tried to use Linux like it was Windows, and it was hard.” It’s a different OS. Go on, move the taskbar of Windows 11 to the left or right edges of the screen. I can do that on Linux, why can’t I do that on Windows? It’s not even hard, it’s just plain impossible. If you try to do things manually in Linux, it’s not going to be intuitive. It will feel like editing the Registry in Windows. Unintuitive and like arcane magic.

It’s slow and consumes a lot of resources. The UX is pretty bad, but not worse than other Microsoft products.

I like how you describe the Don’t Care licenses, aka permissive licenses. A lot of people fall for the narrative that more strict licenses are a burden for other open source developers, and then regret their decision when Evil Corp does what they usually do.