“The previous state” circa the era of discussion, was punching in via front panel, IO drivers for my disk, keyboard and 16x64 monochrome/composite display. Being that close to the hardware helped me learn assembler, but I would not want to go back there. I definitely would rather let the Linux crew write my IP stack and WiFi driver. And as far as my recent embedded system efforts, I’m pretty stoked running C#/WinForms on the Pi. But then again, I don’t use the OS for much aside from the UI. I use a custom kernel for running the attached machinery.