I've said this before here, but techy people vastly overestimate both the ability and the patience of the typical user, and it's the reason so few people use FOSS products.

Products from big tech aimed at private individuals are designed to be as simple to use as possible, which is why they're so popular.

But without Microsoft’s “PC on every desktop” vision for the '90s, we may not have seen such an increased demand for server infrastructure which is all running the Linux kernel now.

Debatable, in my opinion. There were lots of other companies trying to build personal computers back in those times (IBM being the most prominent). If Microsoft had never existed (or gone about things in a different way), things would have been different, no doubt, but they would still be very important and popular devices. The business-use aspect alone had a great draw and from there, I suspect that adoption at homes, schools, etc. would still follow in a very strong way.

If it wasn't them, it would have been other people. Computer science doesn't rest on shoulder of a "Great Man"

What Torvalds did was inspire a like-minded community to come together and work toward a collective good. On a shoe-string budget they constantly threaten Gates' empire.

Gates on the other hand chose to enclose the intellectual commons of computer science and sell them at a profit. He extracted a heavy toll on all sectors of human activity. And what did this heavy burden buy us ? Really NOT MUCH ! It squelched out collaboration and turned programming greedy, it delivered poor bloated software that barely worked and then stagnated for 20 years. It created a farm stall for us to live in, their innovation today is only explained as a series of indignities we will have to live with, because of platform dynamics we really, literally cannot escape the black hole that is windows for they have captured the commons and have made themselves unavoidable, like the Troll asking his toll.

Mommy was one of the higher ups at IBM. Gates got most of it just handed to him. They are not the same.

I know it's fun to bash on Gates, but it's also bullshit. Dave Cutler worked on at least two major operating systems. He's way up there in the Hall of Fame.

I said in another thread about this, he looks like an older Tom Scott.

Clippy!

What if they both did