Was it actually him? I was under the impression that history did not relate what happened to him afterwards, nor who he was. That’s not to say the CCP did not murder a couple of thousand people during the crackdown regardless, because they did, but I have never seen a verifiable claim that a picture of any particular corpse actually was the Tank Man. There are numerous theories I’ve seen floated over the years alleging what may have happened to him afterwards ranging from him being caught and imprisoned, executed, living anonymously in China, or fleeing to Taiwan. All of them are unverified and, of course, mutually exclusive.
The tank operators absolutely did attempt to (and succeeded at) avoid running him over. That much is plainly visible in the video. Whatever happened after the video ended is undocumented and pure conjecture. Plenty of well documented atrocities actually were committed that day, before and after that moment, so there’s not much sense in inventing new ones and bickering over details we haven’t actually got.
Let’s not kid ourselves, most people will not start looking at Linux. They should, but they won’t. They’ll continue to use the version of Windows their machine came with, becoming a botnet petri dish in the process, forever, until it breaks or becomes unusable. If Microsoft actually forces their machine to become unbootable they’ll rush off to the mall and replace it with a Mac.
And in the meantime they’ll click off any nags and warnings Microsoft sends them without reading them.
Just like happened with XP.
Just like what happened with Vista.
Just like what happened with 7.
Etc.
Most users are clueless, barely understand how to use their computers except by rote, and therefore are extremely afraid of change. Microsoft could offer a free puppy with your updrade to Win11 and I think about 75% of users would still refuse to take it.