Computing the old way - Is it a thing of the past?

For a lot of people in the various seasons of life, being acquainted with every aspect of their machines just isn't practical. Most people don't even care, much less have the background to understand what's going on/wrong and what's needed periodically. OS's are way too complex (MS-DOS was complex). Linux is everywhere these days. Yet even it has effectively been hijacked by a malicious corporate monster (in Android). I bought a tablet a few weeks ago, and one of the initial setup screens declared "I agree to accept updates from Google". Apart from hitting "Learn more", and that's only a possibility, don't know, thought of utilizing that after the fact, I had no way of opting out. I won't use the thing on the internet until I figure out how to disable that. Freedom has a price.