From my understanding, its only that bad with windows XP without any service packs, with firewall disabled, and without using any sorta of router that would also have security measures built in. I don't think its even reproducible on XP SP1, much less 7 or 10.

Of course I'd be surprised if there weren't people who stockpiled vulnerabilities in the leadup to the discontinuation of windows 10 security updates, so seems like a good idea to update if it has an internet connection.

Hopefully better VR support on Linux becomes a thing in the near-future. From my understanding, non-VR games are generally pretty good nowadays (bar a few games with extremely invasive anti-cheat malware that you probably shouldn't be running anyways), but VR is still lagging behind.

Yeah but by "connected" I'd assume that at least means with a public IP. Running a stock Debian 5 or 6 system with SSH vulnerabilities could result in the same thing.

That isn't too say that you SHOULD run an old winXP system, but absent allowing a way in or out going somewhere bad the still needs to be a way for the malware to initially interact with the machine