One hopes that that Streisand effect has effect…

Not sure I follow (especially wrt poor kids?) - maybe I’m just missing the reference. I applaud using Linux on old stuff to breath life into it. But I suspect mass adoption would be harder than one might think. Easy to convince tech savvy folk to dive in and wrangle with it (for its numerous advantages and disadvantages), but the majority of folks won’t (they’d sooner move to Apple - with even more waste, proprietary bs, and cost).

Not saying this should be the case, merely that it is the case. (The more adoption, the better chance of better support from developers/HW manus, etc. There’s just a leap that seems very hard to make. Wish I knew how to bridge it, but the obstacles seem less of a technical thing than a social/psychological thing)

FWIW, I used it as a daily driver for many years. And that was back in the days when things weren’t as easy.

Unfortunately, to run the stuff I need to run, I’m pretty much stuck with Windows and WSL. (But with Linux on my old laptop.)

I’m probably not the audience that needs convincing, though.

Linux can breathe life into older laptops (if the HW is supported). It’s not for everyone (and downright infuriating in some ways) but it it does work very well for many things.