-- someone who's been using Linux since 1998, Linux desktops for work stuff since ~2008 and has more machines with only Linux at home than ones with Windows, but still spends the majority of recreation time on a Win7 box because not all games run nicely with Wine, or at all.
Vote with your dollars. What do you care about most? PC Video games, or having an operating system that respects your freedom and privacy? Critical mass starts with you too, if you want PC Video games that run on free operating systems, us those systems and the vendors will follow.
No, it's not a viable alternative for everything, it's damn close. Valve is doing some incorporation of Wine into Steam that should make many "Windows-only" games play effortlessly.
Don't use Linux if you don't want to obviously, but complaining because you can't play all games written for a completely different OS is a valid complaint. If you know people that are concerned about surveillance and privacy, don't scare them away. At least tell people about multi-boot.
Please get over the idea that linux will ever be a 100% perfect drop-in replacement for windows. If you can't accept that their will be some pain involved and things they have to give up then you should expect to be stuck in this abusive relationship forever.
Are you saying that generally or to the person to whom you responded, because it looks like you're both saying the same thing with the current wording and I find it a tad confusing.
As long as MS know that people aren't willing to make sacrifices (and we're using the term loosely) like that they will have no reason to change and the cycle will continue.
Just the system packages need to be stable (eg, distro's repos).
Also worth mentioning is snaps and flatpacks (though I'm not personally a fan, they do exist).
If you gave them a system and promised nothing major would change for 5 years they'd be thankful.
Critical mass starts with you.