The way the current system is set up we rely on work to make money. If jobs get automated away, how will we make money then? We aren't ready for a post-work world.
No one individual can bear the burden of trying to address all social issues. I think it's good to live according to one's political and moral beliefs, but ultimately there is a point to where this is reasonable to expect of someone.
That is to say that I think one can criticize the tech industry and its e-waste production, while also using a modern smartphone, for example.
You have to go through a first run wizard to set up your Microsoft account, etc. even on a computer with Windows preinstalled. At least that was my experience a few years ago, and I doubt it has changed.
The controversy started with questionable sponsorship decisions for NixCon, which brought the entire project leadership under scrutiny as it wasn't the first time this had happened.
This, along with some more long-term issues contributed to the creation of an open letter[^1] criticizing the BDFL of Nix. How valid you consider the criticisms is not for me to decide, but I don't think dismissively reducing the issue to a "woke takeover" is helpful.
I'd recommend taking a look at Guix as a kind of alternative implementation of the idea of Nix. It has its own usability issues, especially surrounding nonfree software and a much smaller community, but it addresses some of the issues you comment on.
I would like to see latency tests, measuring the impact of compositing in X and Wayland, as well as uncomposited X vs tearing-enabled Wayland, etc. Unfortunately I don't think this has been thoroughly benchmarked yet.
I should probably have used the full names for clarity,
either way the acronyms mean, in order: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Ancient Domains of Mystery and Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead.
For those who enjoy SPD I recommend checking out some other popular roguelikes, many of them are also open source.
Some of my personal recommendations would be brogue (probably the most beginner friendly), DCSS (friendly, tons of content), ADoM and Cataclysm DDA (a sandbox survival roguelike, quite a unique mix)