I understand what you mean here, but how can KDE realistically make commercial software vendors port their software to Linux? What group or groups could incentivize this, and how can it be done without creating significant user growth first? (it’s a chicken and egg problem, so you can’t wait until the users are there if they’re waiting on software to be available)

No, you’re not understanding what I’m getting at here. Linux is not windows. It cannot and should not aim to recreate it exactly, that’s a stupid idea from the get-go and will fail if attempted. Making every windows program work on Linux is also very difficult, but also, that’s the Wine team’s job, not KDE’s - KDE devs don’t have the expertise or knowledge to do that work. MacOS isn’t bad because it’s not identical to Windows, Linux should be judged similarly. It not being identical being seen as an issue is a mode of thinking that cannot lead to success. KDE has to be worth using because it’s good in its own right, not because it’s Windows without Microsoft.

To be fair, a lot of the things you listed are impossible for KDE to fix. You can’t make every single windows program work on Linux, you shouldn’t make KDE have exactly the same workflows as Windows, KDE isn’t gonna make it easier/better to install Linux on NTFS, and they have no control over tutorials that instruct people to update their software - How could any of these be used as a roadmap?

You’re right! I thought the meaning of whataboutism was more specific than it was, you just have to respond to an accusation with another accusation, that’s it! TIL

Oh, it’s definitely ad-hominem, that I agree with - they were literally testing your biases, as they stated. I don’t think it’s whataboutism, just ad hominem, actually. They’re accusing you of being as biased as anyone else, then asking a shibboleth to prove their point - the whole premise is ad hominem at that point. I think the differentiating factor is that the questions were about your beliefs, not about the actual events they brought up.

No, it’s really not. Once they said “litmus test”, that makes it clear they’re doing it intentionally, not as a logical fallacy - it’s gauging bias on common topics, which is relevant to a discussion on bias and propaganda. It’s not a series of seemingly-related non-sequiturs that have nothing to do with the topic at hand.

I’d love to be proven wrong here - how is what they brought up not relevant to the topic of bias and propaganda, especially wrt the west?

That’s literally not whataboutism - whataboutism is when you use irrelevant topics to incorrectly prove a point. The poster literally said it was a litmus test, which means mentioning multiple things as they did is correct and is not whataboutism, especially since their argument is about propaganda.