people chose those things due to superiority, not any dogmatic reason. i.e. wordpress was there and does what you expect it to. (besides, linux displaces windows on the server, but not on the desktop for reasons.)
imagine an alternate universe where wikipedia was a ghost town devoid of information, but hey, it's open!
they don't need BT, but rather, you can't let the VM manage its own PTEs. virtualbox lets you configure that - just turn off nested paging. vmware unfortunately doesn't do that. if you can get the VM booting in safe mode, flipping the safety options from system properties perf button might help too. (I will say ME runs fine where 98 doesn't. weird!)
that page is a bit outdated; i do know VBox has changed for at least devices like SVGA, so I think it's possible. that said, i don't use vbox, so i can't say for sure
Most of these apps are just dipping mustards around HOTP/TOTP, so it's a standard protocol. There's an ecosystem of standard applications around it; Twilio, Microsoft, and Google all make pretty popular ones.
I think you underestimate a lot of the APIs for a platform and how they influence an app; Cocoa provides a lot for an application; for example, it can provide a lot of the structure for a document related app in terms of i.e undo/redo, window management, etc.
I use a client that does make it easy, but I shouldn't have to worry about this. Mailing lists are basically full of people who use email in an exceedingly specific way no one outside of mailing list enthuiasts do anymore. I use a graphical email client, as do my coworkers, as do our customers. We don't care about top vs. bottom replies, plain text vs. email, etc. - those who do have lost touch with the average email user.