Sure, but Google is reachable by an IPv4 address too. Which is the problem with IPv6: If you go IPv6-only, your service is unreachable by users whose ISPs only assign IPv4 addresses to users. Which means your service needs an IPv4 address too in order to not lose those users. Which makes some businesses wonder why they need IPv6 in the first place when their service needs to have to have an IPv4 address and being IPv4-only doesn't cause any adverse consequences.

And the cycle perpetuates itself.

Never mind that even Windows can be set up with a local account, aka be set up as a "real OS". Yes, even Windows 11 if you know how. And you can uninstall all the online service-oriented (cr)apps it ships with. Don't get me wrong, Windows has degraded since the Windows 7 peak years, but it's nowhere near bad enough to make me abandon all the backwards compatibility with software and hardware drivers it offers, for now at least, I can't speak about how Wine and Proton will be in the future.

For the case of IPv6, I find it amusing how the market has collectively decided it's cheaper to trade IPv4 addresses as rare commodities (the price of an IPv4 address has risen 10x during the past 10 years, currently sitting at around $60) and also put home users behind a CGNAT (and charge home users who want a real IPv4 address -dynamic or static- extra fees) than move to IPv6.

Something, something... backwards compatibility. But hey, we are told those EU bureaucrats will spend the time and effort to convert all those dox and docx files to odt (and xls and xlsx files to ods) in the name of digital sovereignty. I'll believe it when I see it.

And what you don't understand is that vroom-vroom lovers are AMG's main clientelle, and accountants and actuaries don't care how many of them have "empty" or "full" brains.

They don't care about mis-use, aka a rogue AV vendor potentially spying on users or a kernel-level DRM such as Denuvo going rogue potentially, they care about their kernel not crashing.

Finally, I hate it how third-party AVs casually help themselves into the kernel (via a kernel driver that patches the kernel) as if we are still running XP 32-bit and PatchGuard isn't a thing. Microsoft leaving holes in PatchGuard for AV vendors to use is and has always been downright evil.

The problem HDMI has is that:

1) They have to work with a given number of conductors in the HDMI cable, defined back when 1080p60 was a lot of pixels

2) They want the cables to have standardised Gb/s speeds

3) They want the cables to be cheap

So, instead of defining a "big jump forwards" spec that would require a very expensive cable, they'd rather cover the needs of the now and leave future problems for the future.

Even for standard 35mm, I have seen all kinds of numbers being thrown around regarding its equivalent resolution in pixels, from 2048x1080 to 4096x2160.

If it were up to me, I would start by introducing a simple lossless or near-lossless compression scheme inspired by QOI [qoiformat.org] before doubling the data rate yet again.

Lossless is useless for the case of HDMI because it doesn't guarantee any compression for a given frame or even for a given second of video. In plain English, if you feed a lossless algorithm white noise, there will be no compression and as a result you will exceed the cable's data rate. Also, throwing away frames is generally frowned upon. Near-lossless has already being standardised in HDMI 2.1 in the form of Display Stream Compression (DSC) since 2017, but the problem with near lossless is you will get noticeable artifacts in certain computer-generated content.

BTW I agree with your rant about 3D, it's a shame HDMI 1.4 introduced 3D but capped to either 720p60 or 1080p24, especially considering HDMI 1.4 can do 1080p144, which more than enough for 1080p60 stereoscopic even accounting for the mini-blanking-interval between the two eyes in frame-packed. In fact, an Acer Predator monitor introduced an extension to the HDMI standard that did 1080p60 stereoscopic over HDMI, and by using an EDID hack to trick your Nvidia GPU to think your HDMI 3D-compatible TV is an Acer Predator monitor you can get 1080p60 stereoscopic over HDMI. Also very say to see Nvidia 3D Vision go, especially considering the community it had formed around it (HelixMods) to develop unofficial patches for games to make them work better with Nvidia 3D Vision. You can still get it with RTX 20-series GPUs and old drivers (just block Windows Update from installing newer drivers for the GPU).

In practice, there are differences, such as fan speed controls, RGB LEDs (if just to disable all that), discrete GPUs, and keyboards with custom functions. Yes, a PC not sold as a gaming PC can have those too, I am making a general categorization here.

The funny thing is that voice actors think unions like SAG-AFTRA will save them, the idea that studios will hire non-union actors to train AI doesn't cross their minds. Basically, the AI model will take the voice sample of the non-union actor and make it look professional. Nothing wrong with unions, they just aren't effective when your boss doesn't need your labor in the first place.

So instead of letting the original manufacturer know what you need from their product, you just expect a 3rd party with absolutely no spec or documentation make it work for you, for free.

When I bought the hardware (Alienware 17 R1), I needed it to do one thing: run Windows. And it keeps doing that and will keep doing that for several years more when I'll install ESU updates and even Windows 10 LTSC 2021 IoT on it (supported until 2032). The Alienware Area-51m can even run Windows 11.

It's OP who proposed that "SteamOS needs to be marketed to Windows 10 and 7 gamers as an escape route to keep their expensive gaming hardware going from Microsoft's end of support", NOT me. I explained why this won't work, considering the hardware diversity and proprietary drivers situation is most pronounced in gaming rigs and gaming laptops. Then you interjected with your quite frankly useless ranting about how I am entitled for something I don't want to do and didn't even propose in the first place. And just to pre-empt another useless interjection, I am not saying SteamOS is bad, I'll buy it pre-installed on supported hardware when I want to.

unless it's completely proprietary crap, in which case it's on the proprietary vendor to make it work (Alienware / Razer garbage).

See? This is what you don't understand: As a gamer, I want such "Alienware / Razer garbage" to work and don't care who's responsibility is to make it work, I'd rather stay with some Windows 10 LTSC than bother my beautiful mind with blame games about "who's responsibility it is to make it work with Linux" that offer me no value. Also, I am not interested in hearing your rants about evil hardware vendors not opening up their hardware interfaces either.

5.1 audio hardware is basically already recognized and used under Linux.

Gaming hardware has a special TRRS mini jack for headsets (in addition to the usual TRS line-out jack and microphone mini jack) which may or may not work under Linux. It also has the ability to remap the mini jacks to output analog 5.1 audio. I have an Alienware 17 R1 that has such a thing. The Windows driver also comes with Dolby equaliser filters that make the laptop speakers sound better. None of those three features are guaranteed to work under Linux. All you are guaranteed to get is a basic HDA driver.

Same with WiFi and Bluetooth.

WiFi chips from Broadcom are notorious for not working well under Linux. Yes, I know, Broadcom is evil. I don't care, that's what my laptop has.

Brightness and volume controls are an HID standard, supported for quite some time now even on weird laptop shit that changes by the model.

About HID, even if we assume again there is support for brightness and volume controls, there is stuff such as RGB controls and fan speed controls that isn't well-supported in Linux. For example, my Alienware Area-51m R1 has a special Windows utility to change fan speed profiles (quiet, normal, performance, full speed). Is this supported under Linux for the particular model? Nobody knows. As another example, all my laptops have RGB lights, and I want to set the keyboard to white and disable all the other RGB lights that are enabled by default. Will this work under Linux? Nobody knows. And then there is stuff like TactX macro keys that I also want to work.

Microsoft didn't do that - the proprietary garbage vendor wrote a driver / config app for Windows.

And here you are, with yet another rant about evil hardware vendors writing proprietary drivers and not opening up their hardware interfaces, despite the fact I've told you I don't want to year any of that.

Why should Valve have to take on such a complex and undefined forever-build just to satisfy you, because you don't want to replace or forego a $100 overpriced widget you bought 5 years ago from a vendor who acts like an asshole?

Because the widget still works? Because it's integrated into a laptop or motherboard that will cost more than $100 to replace? Because I can keep using some Windows 10 LTSC and don't have to care about what Valve can or can't do?

You didn't clarify whether you are using a gaming rig or gaming laptop, and anyway, people want to know whether THEIR hardware will work with Linux, not yours. With Windows they can visit the manufacturer's website to get drivers, with Linux is a toss-up. There is so much diversity of hardware in the PC ecosystem that no general promise can be made that a given piece of hardware will work with Linux. That's why Valve abandoned plans to offer SteamOS as a download and went with supporting a small selection of hardware and supporting it well.

I really hope Valve keeps working on Proton and Wine, Windows has been gradually reducing win32/win64 compatibility to the absolute minimum they can get away with. They've already killed Secdrv support (which made most CD and DVD games unplayable), and they've recently introduced a change in Windows 11 memory management that broke some games (that relied on certain memory garbage being in certain places). Proton and Wine may soon be more compatible even for post-XP games than Windows itself.