I have a friend group that insist on all events being planned through facebook.
I’ve missed out on events in the past due to not taking part.
It’s no longer a hill I wish to die on.

I agree and use Signal myself.
But people like the extra features of WhatsApp like desktop/web clients with seamless history sync and all the other little things that WhatsApp provides.
The average Joe doesn’t even think about security or privacy, they just know that the results of using WhatsApp are superior than using SMS.
iMessage is a non starter everywhere out of the US, it just doesn’t have the market penetration.
As an Australian, no one I know (many of whom own iPhones) talk about the blue-green bubble stuff.
They recognise where the fault lies and simply don’t use the app.

In certain places like India, WhatsApp is the default means of communication for everyone.
You can use it without phone data if you are on wifi, it supports better quality than sms for sending images, you can video chat with it, it’s cross platform, etc etc.

What’s more amazing to me is that it’s not more popular in western countries.

Nah, that was worth watching.

Funnily enough, I’ve got a few friends who are long time iPhone users, who actually point this stuff out themselves:

“OMG! Have you seen the eye watering price of the new one?”
“Yay, I finally get stuff you’ve had for years.”

Neither party would ever consider anything else, and they both buy the new model every year. 🤷

At this point I admit that my reasons for choosing Android all those years ago no longer exist or matter, but I can’t imagine changing ecosystem either.

I think all the existing answers are on the basis of creating a new Linux VM.

And if I understand you correctly, you already have a bare metal Linux install that you want to run whilst Windows is up.

This is the best search result I could find: https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=93437

It sounds like Virtualbox will indeed create a pseudo vhdx that points to a real partition, but windows is going to give you permissions drama.

The above link is out of date though, so its best viewed as info rather than guide.

Good luck.

A lockdown browser?

If you need to use windows because of a software issue, not a hardware issue, you’re probably best off running windows in a VM.
That way your linux install is making the WPA3 connection, and as far as the Windows install is concerned, it’s on a wired lan.
This has the added benefit of not having to reboot, you just always start linux and turn the windows VM on and off as required.

.308 is 7.62, civilian measurement vs military (there’s actually implications related to pressures, sidewall thicknesses, machining tolerances, but yeah same same)

They do a plant based version that is still delicious and doesn’t upset lactose intollerent people.

This requirement is designed to be hard, and as such is a major red flag to me.
What else is this company going to be difficult with?
Can i only get customer support or cancel my account in person, between 9-4 on the 2nd Friday of the month?
I would consider alternatives, if possible.

TOTP is a defined standard, specifically RFC 6238.
But I still have 3 different apps on my phone so that I can get on to various customer VPNS. 🤷‍♂️

Can’t tell if you’re joking, but a Request For Comments is effectively a proposal for how a process should be performed.
Some of them are eventually ratified as internet standards by the IETF.
Plenty of them remain useful as defacto standards even without formal acknowledgement.

I agree, that’s why I said “and able”

You can interoperate with googles RCS.
If you are willing and able to enter a partnership like Samsung, you can do it fully (including encryption support etc).

Google are determined to not make it easy, and I agree with you, it appears to be yet another messaging land grab.

Trying to put myself in their headspace for a moment, one justification for making it hard is to stop thousands of apps coming out declaring “full RCS support!” through the APIs, then screwing the pooch (through poor security or deliberate back doors or or or).
Right now Google are desperately attempting to make RCS happen, after almost a decade of trying and failing to make various carriers play ball.
They do not want any bad press about how feature poor/insecure/slow/buggy it is right now.

Only Google can make an RCS app

Yes and no.
You don’t need to make your own OS, but you do need to implement support for the RCS protocol within your app, rather than piggyback on Googles APIs.

I don’t like it, but there’s no legal requirement for google to provide those APIs, like they did with SMS etc.

Windows XP is basically firmware at this point, and has been for over a decade.

Lots of proprietary hardware that works perfectly, will not work on newer versions of Windows due to lack of drivers.

I see it constantly in factory situations with scales, scanners and robot controllers, it would only be worse for million dollar x-ray machines.

it’ll work just like SMS does now

I agree with this part of your statement 100%.
It will work POORLY.

Whether it’s in the same app or simply a different colour like SMS is currently, it’ll be a half assed implementation, designed to segregate your iphone and android friends.

Got an existing iphone group chat? Bet you can’t add an RCS participant to it.
Create a new RCS group chat so you can include everyone? Bet it’s missing features that you’d get in imessage.
Receive a high resolution video from a friend via imessage? Forward that to another friend via RCS and they’ll receive 5 blurry pixels.

And throughout all of this, apple will blame the RCS protocol and say “We’re actively working with GSMA to improve RCS”.

No one trusts apple for the very simple reason that they have a habit of saying the quiet part out loud: Tim Cook Says ‘Buy Your Mom An iPhone’

There’s some gotchas in Apples statement:

They have promised to implement “RCS Universal Profile”
This means the bare minimum, not the advanced features implemented by Google and Samsung etc.
An example of a missing feature from Universal Profile is end to end encryption.

They also said: “This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users.”
The implication of this is that it won’t be in the iMessage app, it will be in a separate but official app, siloing your Android friends from your iPhone friends.

When this comes out, every European is going to shrug and keep using Whatsapp.

It’s not the android side that’s failing, it’s Apples refusal to implement anything other than SMS for cross ecosystem compatibility.