The attack on SGI didn't only happen on the lame Windows side, with their crappy software and ultra lame 3D software (compared to what SGI had), which people would love because their lameness was matched by their ultra-cheap pricepoint.
The attack on SGI also came from open-source and Linux: cheap commodity hardware that'd run both mediocre but ubiquitous commercial software and the very same cheap commodity hardware that'd run Linux.
On which OS are most (all?) AI models trained today? What OS powers 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers?
Linux.
That's the tragedy of SGI: as if cheap commodity x86 hardware wasn't enough, they got then attacked by both Windows and Linux on that cheap hardware.
P.S: as a sidenote my best friend (still best friend to this day)'s stepfather was the head of SGI Benelux (Belgium/The Netherlands/Luxembourg) so my friend had this SGI Indy (the "pizza tower" one) at his home. Guess what we'd do every day after school?