I'm sensing a Linux advocate has entered the ring and, well, I really do not blame you! Thing is, my answer in these discussions is always the same: the market needs a mainstream, widely accepted OS in order "tο get stuff done and have some fun®" and Linux did not manage to become that when a few opportunities arose in the past. Now it's even more difficult than it once was and we are stuck with a substandard OS for the next decade at the very least.

You know what is the most frustrating thing about all this, though? It's the fact that Microsoft is not *incapable* of delivering a truly light on resources, modular, fast operating system. It's just that they don't care enough to do it. Sometimes it feels as if some bastards at Redmond actually *like* to keep mainstream consumers tied to an OS that infuriates and helps them in equal measure. Like the Stockholm syndrome inverted.

Windows are so bad at so many things but JUST good enough to do the things most people need on a daily basis. That's it. Most people do not know any better so they are not actively asking for a better OS. Taking games and legacy compatibility into account completes that picture. It's a mess.

Microsoft, I believe, had the chance to break free of all that right around the second year of its major Windows 8 fuckup. They could have said "fuck it, we failed big time, let's scrap everything, go all the way and deliver a truly new OS with a small core, on-demand loading of subsystems, legacy compatibility on a separate layer etc". But they were too afraid that they'd lose market share fast and be unable to promote their services on their platfrom, so we got Windows 10 instead.

Now it's even less appealing to them to design a totally new, Linux-like or even macOS-like operating system. Maybe when *everything* becomes cloud-based we'll get rid of Windows. But not a day sooner.