Even after working with servers with hundreds of GBs of RAM it still amazes me how much RAM you chew through running even a small number of VMs. I built a new machine to do VMs and run a gaming VM with GPU passthrough not long ago and am already considering jumping from 64GB to 128GB on the host.
I was able to stick to 16GB on my Windows 11 gaming VM for ages. Only recently cracked because I was using the OBS replay buffer that was using 2-4GB so I upped to 24GB.
I would never recommend somebody build a new gaming system with less than 32GB now though since you will need an upgrade at some point. If you’re already running 16GB then it’s probably fine to just wait until you do a full re-build.
That said, 16GB is probably the new standard for normal PCs if you’re hoping to get 5 years out of them.
For the vast majority of users Linux is just a worse deal. Only thing that really comes to mind that Linux does that users care about is that it will support that hardware that Windows 11 will leave behind, and even those users will happily just run Windows 10 without updates and if that bites them in the ass then maybe they’ll upgrade or just ask their IT friend to use a bypass to make Windows 11 at least work on their old hardware.
Otherwise, of the things users actually care about, Linux has worse app support to the point that even pro-Linux users would rather dual-boot that lose access to their games and worse hardware support. Linux also has a problem of not being well understood by a lot of tech folk so if you bring somebody onboard you better be ready to be their only point of support.
ChromeOS is probably the best example against this since it is basically just a browser, the laptops it sells on are substantially better value than their budget counterparts and realistically a lot of the people buying them are parents for their kids so the user’s preference is substantially pushed aside in favour of cost. The SteamDeck is another good counter-example since it essentially refuses to compete with the PC gaming market by calling itself a handheld.
Linux is stuck in the crappy position of needing more users to get more software and hardware support but users need better software and hardware support for Linux to make sense compared to Windows. It’s getting better and Valve’s efforts have steadily brought the Linux gaming percentage up but it’s still the enthusiast OS.
By all means encourage it’s usage though. Linux is a far more open and privacy-respecting option and the more tech folk and basic-usage users that adopt it the better!
And Microsoft ended up providing their own compiled version of OpenJDK to get around the non-commercial use part of the licence to do it.