The GNU/Linux developers unwilling to support GNU/Linux hardware vendors are the ones to blame.
Can you elaborate on this?
If they really cared, like myself (1215B owner), they would be giving money to Tuxedo, System 76, Dell, Asus, and whatever else that is shipping hardware with Linux distributions pre-installed.
I am very tempted to go back to Linux sometime next year, but I really fear I'd end up in the same situation (or worse, since I'm also reliant on scaled HiDpi screens now and support for that sort of thing is completely absent in some distros).
Of course it depends on how you configure it but if you've really de-bloated your system you can get much more out of the battery than Windows can. I've been able to get more battery out of a recent Inspiron, a less recent Toshiba Satellite, this Thinkpad, and an old Samsung netbook, so I could be biased by my hardware.
Nowadays it's much easier to get higher-level Linux support, too.
[0] maintaining an android subsystem (and various versions as distros) should be easier now for the same reason it's easier for vendors to update phones, project treble.
[1] better filesystem sharing, GPU pass through, WSL is close to natively supporting graphical applications, etc
For example, the store for WP8.1 and older has shut down, so you can no longer get the app for upgrading to 10. There was a tool released by the end of 2019 that can do it via USB, but that stopped working in October since the server it contacts now requires TLSv1.2, and the tool was written in .NET 4 which doesn't do 1.2 by default. So there is a registry hack you can use to enable it again, until eventually that doesn't work anymore either. There are inofficial, incomomplete mirrors of some device specific factory images, and the pretty awsome "windows phone internals" tool for rooting and modding some devices, which was mostly a one man show.
With said tool and a lot of patience, it should still be able to get one of the two insider builds of win10mobile running that had android emulation, given you find the instructions, all the files and images required. And then it's still only an alpha version that emulates the Android 4.4 API.
I have a friend whos working on software archival, so through him I became aware of the importance of trying to preserve these kind of things, and those very closed and additionally niche platforms are the second hardest thing to preserve, after cloud services.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux
They likely don't believe this. Any sane technical person should believe that a Unix-based OS (or something better) that can run Windows programs would be superior. They just need to keep everyone in that awful crabpot because it gets them money.
Same with DirectX vs. OpenGL, historically: "In December of 1996, Carmack released a document that outlined his grievances with the Direct3D API. He outlined the differences between the APIs by comparing the code required by both APIs to draw a triangle to the screen; OpenGL required only four lines of code in his samples, while Direct3D required a plethora of commands and assignations.
Carmack's blunt way of explaining things was so damaging to Direct3D's reputation that Direct3D developer Alex St. John posted a follow up in February of 1997 defending his API and strangely enough for Microsoft admitting its flaws."[0]
0: https://openglbook.com/chapter-0-preface-what-is-opengl.html
Also 1996 was 24 years ago. DirectX has had significant overhauls where I doubt any comparison from so long ago has any merit.
DirectX is very much alive. Apple has deprecated OpenGL support.
Vulkan was made to be a better OpenGL as well.
Also wasn't OpenGL considered too bloated for embedded devices and they created OpenGLES?
I find that such statement always lack a well-stated assumption/goal: i.e. superior "for what"?
It's easy for most of us to say a Ferrari is superior to RAV4... but if we don't explicitly scope-limit, there's going to be some disappointed IKEA shoppers :D
In terms of Unix, I use AIX full time at work for servers (let's not go there;), Linux on some servers and desktops. But I'm certainly not going to install Linux for my wife or mother in law - I'm a proponent and an enthusiast but not a masochist and I do not want to constantly fix and explain the differences.
Perhaps less controversially, for my gaming & photo-editing PC, Windows "just works". I don't worry about install, drivers, maintenance, distros, anything. It's been rock stable through Win7-Win10 updates from 2013 through now with no reinstalls or hassle.
Is that a personal anecdote - of course it is; but if we're going to make sweeping "it's superior" statements, I feel we must state the scope/goal. So very very very few things in life are superior for everything to everybody :-/
"John Carmack now thinks DirectX is better than OpenGL"
https://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/pc/carmack-directx-bett...
Even the OpenGL hero no longer buys into it.
> 'It is really just inertia that keeps us on OpenGL at this point,'
If Linux distro vendors want to be more competitive for Windows users then they will have to take the initiative to improve Wine, the same way Microsoft took the initiative to support Linux apps on their own platform. It doesn't make any sense for Microsoft to take both torches and kill their own competitive advantage. They would rather have people use their own platform, Windows, which they clearly believe is the better one.