Unfortunately, it was all of our responsibility to make sure our neighbors didn't turn out to be uneducated assholes, and we collectively failed. As it turns out, abdicating that responsibility to a department of education in a far-away land didn't actually satisfy the need.

Really? I don't think I've ever used NTFS on any machine I've owned.

Indeed. We should all get our information from news outlets owned by billionaire oligarchs.

It's a good thing for you that most people do. Those ads your'e avoiding fund most of the content you consume. You can only freeride as long as enough others are paying the toll to subsidize you. I do the same, but I won't be surprised or angry if it becomes impossible.

So say we all.

Apple is its own thing. It is not fully inconceivable that the feds (and therefore everyone else) would switch to MacOS if Windows became [even more] unsupportable, but I doubt Microsoft can provide Office at even the sad level it achieves on Windows and it would take Apple time to ramp up supply.

Linux is an easy sell unless people are hooked on some application or game that doesn't run on it, then it's hard. The interface is familiar enough now (especially with KDE, but there are some other basically credible options) that they won't have a lot of room to complain so long as they don't have problems. That part is going to depend on the hardware, and IME they will have the fewest problems with AMD CPU and GPU now. If they have Intel it might or might not be OK; if they've got Nvidia they're likely to have a bad time at least sometimes.

Business is increasingly using web-based tools for everything, which is not itselft a bad thing- if only more of them were self-hosted. But either way, this decreases the dependence on Windows. I've worked where there's a few Windows machines for clerical staff, or where there's a Mac for the graphics department. That can be Windows' fate again.

Obviously many others had thought of it. Hastings' brilliant idea was to pivot from what was working (DVD rental by mail -- which itself was pretty innovative) to streaming while the DVD business was still good. That seems like a blindingly obvious move in hindsight but it's actually really hard when you're in the thick of running a successful business to step back and think "We need to completely change our business strategy, even though it's working well".

As geekmux mentioned, Blockbuster was incredibly well-positioned to do both of the things that Netflix did, first to pivot from brick-and-mortar DVD rental to rental by mail (possibly exploiting their broad physical store base) and then to streaming. They had deep relationships with every player in the content industry, large and small, they had near-universal name recognition and positive perceptions in retail video distribution. But they did neither, they just kept running their business until their market disappeared. That's what usually happens, and it's not because the CEOs are stupid, it's because it actually takes someone with both vision and guts to see and act on broad market changes before they happen.

They have to also have the balls to have a winning formula, like put the nerds with successful histories in charge and let them make decisions and spend money. Instead they want to design everything by committee, and everyone wants to have the biggest piece of the pie. The more companies you combine the less successful it is likely to be. See: Every fucking project like this ever between any of the principals you named here.

Do you need high performance or only compatibility? If the latter, you can at least stuff Windows into a VM for your own protection. Only the graphics performance is poor, but the graphics functionality is also poor.

I believe the OS uses less RAM, but that doesn't change application memory use overall. If applications make inefficient use of resources, there's only so much the OS can do to improve that. It's not like iOS where it's on lock, developers are free to do things not-the-Apple-way.

I do have a system I run Linux on successfully with only 8GB, but all I run on it is a browser, and sometimes CHIRP.

My desktop has 64GB and it is what I want a desktop to be, I can run lots of things without swap.

My MiniPC has 32GB and it is adequate. But I can't just run whatever I want. I don't use swap because I use SSDs and I don't want to reduce their lifespans if my system goes nuts.

16GB is a reasonable minimum for someone who wants to do more than run a browser.

This isn't even vaguely close to the truth for AMD, whose Linux drivers are far superior to their Windows drivers, and who is now leading sales in the datacenter. AMD is going to do fine. It's Intel with their shitty Linux drivers that has to be concerned. This is a bit ironic because throughout all history it's been AMD with the shitty drivers and Intel with working ones, so it's just another example of how Intel has fallen.

No one does.