There is a large contingent of heavy Windows users who move their sidebars to the left or right who MS may also be content ignoring, because many of these users have no alternative.

They may, for example, be heavy Excel users, with macros, etc. In why case now other OS is even an option.

Yeah & other high profile tastemakers/taste-havers.

Yeah I think people who use Linux are the opposite of tastemakers, whatever that is. (Taste-undertakers?)

Low snipe. Annnddd... disagree.

In general I think Microsoft Windows has precious few tastemakers. It's a radically consumerist / default system. There are basically no bonding grounds, no places where tasteful Windows users emerge from, gather at. And how could these things emerge from a radically consumerist / default system? Consumer OSes are define by their overwhelming colossal hordes of default users with ultra low interest just scratching by. There is no imaginable place for an interested engaged Windows community to take hold.

Basically it takes way outsider communities to drive this indifferent passive receptive commumity of Windows users to good. The Linux users have tadte, care, empathy... entirely unlike 98% of users who simply passively consume what they are given.

i fall hard away from you. disagree very heavily. it's a tasteless undiscerning world versus people who have some real consideration, who engage. we haven't really figured out how to let the rest of the world engage in a choiceful system, there's still rampant casual violence & disdain for alternatives that in truth work fine.

regardless, there's precious few tastemakers & people with legitimatizable opinions. i can think of few better users than the linux users use lambast, shirk, disdain as the people who have tastes, who care. i dont know why you would so callously & casually disdain caring & community like this. way out of touch to me: what better more responsible authority might we turn to?

It's not a snipe. To be a "tastemaker" your taste eventually has to become mainstream. You say it yourself, Windows is a consumerist/default system. It rarely changes, and when it does, the users hate it. What has Windows taken from Linux? Certainly not the pages upon pages of black+neon tiling window managers of /r/unixporn. That's the part of the community concerned with customization. The rest just use stock KDE or GNOME. How is that different from Windows?

PowerTools is a huge rip off of things Linux users have been doing for decades; tiling &c. Virtual desktops in Windows 10 is another rip off. Mouse Without Borders catching up to long cherished Synergy/Barrier. Good for Microsoft! Catch up! WSL again gave the tastemakers/demanding folk that which they demanded.

I don't think most users could cite what changed between Windows versions. 7->8->10->11.... it's been such a wash. But Linux users see a lot of little things they expected, now semi available.

Microsoft is definitely stealing from the best, and the best ideas are clearly originating on Linux & in open-source.

Virtual desktops have been in Linux/Unix since 1984 or so. Why steal them now? Obviously there's more to the story than "Linux tastemakers made it trendy". Also many of the things you mention (such as cross-device mouse movement) actually started out as commercial products, on Mac, before going to Linux. So to say they were stolen from Linux is just ignoring their history. "Microsoft stole Xyz" is a sure-fire way to get clicks in the Linux/Mac community, but you need to take those stories with a healthy dose of skepticism.

None of these defenses work for me. I 100% see Microsoft chasing the puck of the good, engaged, active user communities- the ones from other platforms. That Linux has been doing it for a long time & Microsoft is only just catching up doesnt change the reality, just shows how bad MS is at adapting to & trying to do more. There's little enough demand to push further, get better there!

I cant find any evidence of a predecessor to Synergy on Mac. Synergy was launched in May 2001, initially for for X11.

Good ideas always happen elsewhere. GUIs getting ripped off of of Xerox is no surprise. Overall there is, I'd claim, extremely little genuine innovation in UIs. GNOME seems to be one of the few out there willing to keep re-beginning, doing radical refreshes, but it's still not like boldly vastly different than other things. But Linux users, with their libre attitudes, are out there exploring & finding what is possible & what makes sense, across dozens of window mamagers & thousands of add-on components & endless exploring/reconfiguring... not just consuming. Of course MS is watching & borrowing the emerging stuff.

Hahaha the assumption here being that only Linux users are power users ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Remember what assumptions get you!