Well, fair enough that you were exposed to them. I didn’t have a lot of friends, especially not those even remotely into any kind of tech, as a kid; I think I first heard of trackballs from a programming teacher in about 1996 and bought one to try out of curiosity. Ever since then I’ve used one whenever it was an option.
I’ve even mostly used the same model. If you look in my comment history, you can see I recently mentioned that most of what I use is Kensington Orbits. I’ve tried other models, but they don’t work for me.
The one PC gaming exception for me is Minecraft. In that game you have to right-click a lot (as I’m sure you know) and I guess I haven’t developed the muscles for that because it makes my wrist very tired very quickly. Still, I play a lot of FPS games and have no problem holding the right click for zoom and such; only quick, repetitive right-clicking causes problems for me.
edit: To address your original comment, I have one friend who uses a trackball at work but a regular mouse for anything else. Other than that, I rarely meet anyone who has even heard of them, let alone used them, let alone consistently done so.
On PC, I game exclusively with trackballs and have since the nineties. I’ve never not been given the side eye when someone found out that’s how I play.
When was this magical time during which they were popular?
I am married. My wife is concerned because I enjoy and own an unreasonable quantity of video games and books; and we have a toddler with a growing interest in both as well.
My wife says that our next house won’t have a library, it will just be built from books.
On the plus side, one of my favorite authors - Terry Pratchett - once said “I wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who has enough room for all of their books.” I would have liked to be friends with him.
FWIW, my understanding is that the owner of Epic is actively anti-Linux, so your third feature is a unlikely at best. The fourth was only remotely likely due to market share.