"(All these mentioned people who have access to school/family computers they can't play with because of the risk of breaking? They could use QEMU or VirtualBox and Linux right now)."
Except that if you're the kind of person who doesn't have enough knowledge to set that up for your eight year old, are you really going to let them try and do it themselves?
There's a big difference between "Hey mum! My new teacher gave me this massive manual: can I install a whole load of programs you never heard of on the family computer?" and "Hey mum! My new teacher gave me this instead of a textbook. Can I borrow the tv to do my homework?"
Except that if you're the kind of person who doesn't have enough knowledge to set that up for your eight year old, are you really going to let them try and do it themselves?
There's a big difference between "Hey mum! My new teacher gave me this massive manual: can I install a whole load of programs you never heard of on the family computer?" and "Hey mum! My new teacher gave me this instead of a textbook. Can I borrow the tv to do my homework?"
It also skips the whole 3rd world scenario.