I don’t think the issue is performance though. The unspoken part of this comparison is in bold:
“Linux vs Windows tested in 10 games. In the games we could find that work on linux, the performance was 17% faster on average. In all the rest of the games, Windows worked 100% better.”
I always use Google anonymously as I always find alternative search engines to be lacking. Even without personalized search results, Google always works better for me.
I wonder if the abandonment occurred around the time that image uploads were disabled, old images wiped and instance was often down. That’s about the time I realized it was basically impossible to moderate and contribute to a community I created on the instance. I now handle mod duties from another instance, one that is usually accessible and allows image uploads.