If it's dangerous to repair it, it's dangerous to own. That's the domain for regulations by the government, not arbitrary software restrictions by software manufacturers.
They don't implement these to keep you safe. They do it purely to make more money.
That strongly depends on the job. If the company has to follow regulations to meet some security posture, wiping the OS (and all the security tools and configuration set up by IT) to put your own favored OS without matching the security requirements could wind up with you getting fired.
I think it was pine, actually, but it was over 10 years ago so I can't say for sure.
Not only did my math master's thesis adviser use Linux, he read his email from a command line program and wrote his papers in plain TeX, considering LaTeX a new fangled tool he didn't need.
Don't worry, H5N1 is here to save the gaming industry!
The attack vector described in the article uses the VPN client machine's host network, i.e. the local network the device is attached to. They don't discuss the DHCP server of the VPN provider.
Been the only one in my family for years using Linux, but over the last few months struggles with Windows have basically resulted in all but one computer in the house being migrated to Linux.
Put it on my 10-year-old son's desktop because Windows parental controls have been made overly complicated and require Internet connectivity and multiple Microsoft accounts to manage. Switched to Linux Mint, installed the apt sources for the parental control programs, made myself an account with permissions and one for him without permissions to change the parental controls, and done. With Steam he can play all of the games in his library.
Only my wife is still using Windows, but with ads embedded in the OS ramping up, and features she liked getting replaced with worse ones, she's getting increasingly frustrated with Microsoft.