If the Windows 12 rumors (CorePC etc.) are really true, and Windows continues down the path of PMs and designers handing out orders from their Macs, I expect a temporary jump in the amount of gamers jumping ship.
YEs, if you have to use linux, it's probably a great thing to have security run features run in a virtual environment, nut I think people who have an old system and don't want to buy a new computer might look at other options that don't just chew up system resources. Sudo doesn't require little cores.
Nowadays Windows even runs critical parts of the kernel and drivers in their own little sandboxes, it uses mostly userspace drivers, and every OS handle has a security descriptor associated with it.
Also if running on the network, there are AD group policies that can be really fined tuned to what each user is allowed to access on their computers.
Windows NT linage of OSes isn't the same free ride for all than Windows 9x.
Oof, that's a damning statement. Is there evidence this is a real thing? I would hope under Nadella the concept of dogfooding is ubiquitous enough that they are all forced onto surface pros and windows 11, but I've seen crazier things.
Depends on what you mean by evidence. Several HNers claiming to be or have been Microsoft employees attest to the designers at least using Macs. To my knowledge no one has ever stepped forward to contradict them.
Frankly, give where Windows has gone under Nadella, I think he'd just rather the Desktop OS die off as a concept.
Instead what I have witness have been many UNIX zealots (myself included), to either move into Windows (alongside VMs), or macOS, with Linux desktop never going beyond 2% in 25 years.
That's a very confident assertion for something that is extremely debatable either way. Do you have a source on Linux being a non-starter? At least a million Steam Deck users seem to be doing just fine.