The knowledge isn't the problem. It can be quickly regained, and progress of science and technology often offer new paths to even better quality, which limits the need for recovering details of old process.
The actual problem is, there is no market to go up to anymore. Once everyone is used to garbage being the only thing on offer, and adjust to cope with it, you cannot compete on quality anymore. Customers won't be able to tell whether you're honest, or just trying to charge suckers for the same garbage with a nicer finish, like every other brand that promises quality. It would take years of effort and low sales to convince the customers to start believing you're the real deal, which (as beancounters will happily tell you) you cannot afford. And even if you could, how are you going to convince people you're not going to start cutting corners again a few years down the line? In fact, how do you convince yourself? If it happened once, if it keeps happening everywhere around across all economy, it's bound to happen to your business too.
Desktop Linux has gotten better, though much of the improvement happened decades ago. I believe the first person to prematurely declare "the year of Linux on the desktop" was Dirk Hohndel in 1999: https://www.linux.com/news/23-years-terrible-linux-predictio...
And speaking as someone who was running desktop Linux in 1999, I remember just how bad it was. Xfce, XFree86 config files, and endless messing around with everything. The most impressive Linux video game of 2000 was Tux Racer.
But over the next 10 years, Gnome and KDE matured, X learned how to auto-detect most hardware, and more-and-more installs started working out of the box.
By the mid-2010s, I could go to Dell's Ubuntu Linux page and buy a Linux laptop that Just Worked, and that came with next day on-site support. I went through a couple of those machines, and they were nearly hassle free over their entire operational life. (I think one needed an afternoon of work after an Ubuntu LTS upgrade.)
The big recent improvement has been largely thanks to Valve, and especially the Steam Deck. Valve has been pushing Proton, and they're encouraging Steam Deck support. So the big change in recent years is that more and more new game releases Just Work on Linux.
Is it perfect? No. Desktop Linux is still kind of shit. For examples, Chrome sometimes loses the ability to use hardware acceleration for WebGPU-style features. But I also have a Mac sitting on my desk, and that Mac also has plenty of weird interactions with Chrome, ones where audio or video just stops working. The Mac is slightly less shit, but not magically so.
And yet I run it every day, and it's by FAR the most enjoyable platform and tooling to use (for me).