However they patched this on the Windows side was quite fragile, because it kept breaking after OS updates. After I could no longer get it working with the reinstall and pray method, I switched to Linux because of this issue. I fixed it once with an EDID in the initramfs, and haven't had any issues for the last 6 years.
At first, this seems a reason not to use Linux, but a future upgrade of win/osx will break your hardware. Tons of hardware gets obsoleted this way. Meanwhile, Linux will just keep on working.
Yep. I first and foremost look fir Linux support explicitly called out in the system requirements. If I can't find it, I look for reviews mentioning Linux.
But explicitly supported is always the best, ideally backed by reviews that confirm it.
Reasonable and practical, but which direction did get us more progress for the web?
EDID exists for a reason and is a good thing; monitors providing reliable, useful EDID data is something to strive for.
It's gotten a lot better over the years as the result of operating systems using and enforcing it more. Monitors with bogus/garbage EDID used to be a lot more common 10+ years ago.