Inline responses also enable addressing each subtopic individually, in an organized manner. Feels like threading for subtopics, and enables responding to specific sections of a prior email without having to make circuitous references.

+1

I feel a lot of the "ThinkPad running GNU/Linux" crowd I described were originally descended from the Usenet crowd, and the culture propagated.

They are the Unix die-hards who refuse to use non-FOSS solutions at any cost, and actively are hostile to Microsoft (and maybe Apple/Google).

Whereas the people used to top posting were trained that way because that's how Outlook worked.