at a consumer level, the only people that ever knew or cared were people trying to run linux or a bsd Lots of tech support stories in the HN replies

at a consumer level, the only people that ever knew or cared were people trying to run linux or a bsd Lots of tech support stories in the HN replies here, and the linked Anandtech discussion, that contradict that. Yeah, winmodems were "good enough" for most. But tended to perform worse with noisy phone lines. Which were really common. Which is what the linked article talks about. Also remember that DOS online gaming was a thing for a few years. If you played Quake online in the early days, you were generally not doing it through Windows. Also I think Warcraft and all them were dos. Battle net? Kali? I dunno, that was my friend's department.