Thunderbolt is an awkward implementation, but a good product. There is no alternative offering that provides what it does. Reading the rant you linked, there s

Thunderbolt is an awkward implementation, but a good product. There is no alternative offering that provides what it does. Reading the rant you linked, there seems to be no real content or references to information. It mostly complains about USB-PD negotiation of the Thunderbolt alt-mode (which doesn't have anything to do with thunderbolt), and that the controller is proprietary (which sucks, sure, but so is most other controllers in the system). IOMMU not being on by default as it should be is a motherboard manufacturer problem. Vulnerabilities found with it active should have CVE's created so that they can get fixed, like any other safety issue. As someone using Thunderbolt on my Linux laptop, I can inform you that it works quite well. (EDIT: Also note that Intel technically has promised to make Thunderbolt open and royalty-free, although they have missed their deadline on that promise.)