Wanting to dual-boot sometimes isn't that rare, surely. And local storage for documents remains popular too. It seems to reflect the reality that serious Linux development effort has been very server-focussed for a long time.
Having to reboot is so inconvenient, sooner or later ina dual boot setup you leave your non-preferred env colecting dusts and cobwebs.
GNU philosophy is not about moneymaking or footing the bill. Sometimes a problem gets worse when you throw money at it.
I am probably in the minority of Linux users though.
Eh? People just pay for their stuff. The problem is there isn't really a market for OSes (as a consumer), period. Unless you build a PC yourself, which is not the norm, you don't usually even buy an OS.
This has nothing do with whether the linux audience pays for stuff or not...they pay fine. It is true that it is relatively niche even for linux folk to want to do this sort of thing, but that has more to do with laptop vs desktop form factors than the market. If it were a common need, I think it would be a common thing found on the market. In fact the existing ext4 stuff for Windows indeed used to be paid, but this was primarily for Windows users, Linux users have had no issue accessing ntfs drives for ages, and generally didn't really enjoy giving Windows access to their drives anyways, what with the market for viruses and whatnot...
It’s really not outside the realm of reason for the subset of those people that want to use Windows for something other than playing video games is small enough for there to not be the base level of interest needed for this stuff to get off the ground.
People still use local storage.
(I'd also like native ext4 support in Windows.)
And given the availability of cloud storage, I can just upload whatever little I need to share.
Although, I’ve found I very rarely need the guest for gaming anymore, more so for opening the odd Photoshop file and similar tasks.
In 2010, used to dual boot. In 2014 or so, I switched to VFIO GPU/SSD passthrough and never booted to Windows again. In maybe 2019 or so, I pretty much stopped using passthrough even, though this is partly because I stopped playing a few games that proton didn't run (mostly because of e.g. Easy Anti Cheat, etc).
I don't even have my windows ssd installed in my tower any more, that's how little I expect to need it these days.