Game devs that want to target Linux will keep wanting to dev on _____.
Linux devs who want to start doing games, will keep wanting to develop on Linux.

Also don't forget the devs that "hate windows but use it because the SDK only works there". Those would fall into group two. Granted, it's not all the developers out there, but certainly a pretty large proportion of the total.

They wouldn't go out of business. They'd just shrink to their natural size.
Supose 100millon webcams get sold per year due to non-funciononness on new OSs. If they wrote drivers for new OSs as they come out, they'd probably sell way way less (10M?). But that's the size a that company should have, artificially inflating it with programed obsolecense is a waste of resources for humanity as a whole.

You say that until the driver that supports your card stops supporting the latest kernel, and you can't recompile it. Nor can anybody. You're just screwed. It's happened plenty of times, and will keep on hapening.

Also, open source and performant are not mutually exclusive (Intel Linux drivers).

Just the window manager really, no big incompatibility there. Most of us all use different ones already.

There's Windows XP 64bit edition. That's what my mother actually uses, and it supports all the amd64 architecture features.

Because that's not profitable. If company X writes windows 7 for old hardware, they can't sell you new hardware as easily.
Mind you, I don't approve of this, I'm merely explaining their rationale.

Someone wrote the driver for linux, most likely (a) for free, because he needed it, or (b) payed by the company. However, since the linux kernel is far more stable (in terms of API) than windows, the driver just kept on working until today. I've got a webcam that supported up to windows 98. Yes, 98. It works fine on Linux.

Morality aside, and thinking just about money: yes, a yearly subscription is what's best for them. I think that's their goal as of Windows 8.1. Buy yearly payments and upgrades would not haved worked 10-15 years ago.

The cost for supporting a single machine that uses XP is equal to the cost of an unsold Windows 8 license.

My Dad recently moved to Linux. He uses a windows VM to use tax-related software. It's either that, or not being able to submit tax-related-data, which would mean, "Go to jail. Do not pass go."

If wine was as easy-to-use and newbie friendly as expected, that's one less windows machine (abeit, a VM) the world would have.

Sure, he used a VM. But most non-tech people wouldn't do that. They'd want that exe to run, or go back to windows, and that's the end of it.

Water is cheap too. Should I just leave the tap running all day long?

Yes, memory is cheap, but that philosphy of not-caring because it's cheap is what has lead to incredibly bloated programas nowadays. What huge features does MSO 2010 have, that justify the over 10x space and memory used in comparison to MSO '95? Prettier looking, a few extra features. But that's essentialy it. A that's just a normal, random example too.

Where would you develop for Linux if not on Linux? It's a desktop OS, already very oriented towards developers.

As a Linux user and dev, I seriously don't know how to develop on any other platform. I'm interested in game development as a hobby, but if I had to deal with windows, I'd simply never do it. It's just too much hastle for me.

Ah, because wine 64bit support on slackware is very important for making Linux a mainstream desktop OS.

Oh, there are plenty. Humble Bundle games. Don't Starve. Planetary Annihilation. A lot of the steam games also have non-steam versions you get if you buy it from their website too.

You're not suposed to RTFA on slashdot, you must be new here.

On a closet, attic, or other closed spaces, the avoidance of accidents pays of. CFLs contain mercury, you don't want to accidentally hit and break one (which WILL happen in small, closed spaces full of stuff).

Yeah, they're cheaper in the US. For me (outside US), a LED bulb costs the equivalent of a month's electric bill. If I change all 8 bulbs in the house, and get a 20% decrease in my bull, it'd still be 40 months before I recover the investment. And 20% is a very very generous guess, since light bulb don't add up that much.