It's really a failure of vision by hardware makers. Intel especially should have aggressively backed Linux Desktop because: 1) it would have helped invert the

It's really a failure of vision by hardware makers. Intel especially should have aggressively backed Linux Desktop because: 1) it would have helped invert the subservient position they had with Microsoft in general 2) would have allowed Intel to push out an demonstrate hardware features in an OS without waiting for Microsoft to support it two years down the line in some service pack 3) probably would have kept them up with consumer hardware and the smartphone thing wouldn't have blindsided them 4) probably enabled them to get more of their peripherals businesses (which they constantly acquire and shed) 5) enabled cheaper low end devices where the Microsoft tax is a quite large percentage of the device cost 6) would have enabled them to be in the ARM game if they wanted to, IoT with Atom processors, and tons of other markets Qualcomm or some other ARM vendor should have done it to 1) have a real alternative to google controlled Android 2) get ARM out to more consumer devices 3) get their hardware features demonstrated more quickly Google should have done it (yeah ChromeOS sucks)...... well, we I'm shocked ChromeOS hasn't been dropped yet and Google would never have stuck with it. But none of that matters now, it should have been done 20 years ago. And Apple seems to be the only hardware company that does software well.