I would rather != stay the way it is, and have the language support ≠ as a synonym. 30 years ago, on the mac's HyperCard, the language supported ≠ as an inequality comparator (as well as ≤ and ≥ for <= and >=, respectively). On the mac it's easy to type with the Option key and =.
Back then, those characters weren't easy to type on dos/windows so it seems to be a case of being stuck with the "lowest common denominator" in terms of character input across OSes, reminiscent of C's trigraphs where "??<" was used because keyboards didn't have "{"—thankfully those are long gone. Ligatures are a hack around that but it always struck me as an inelegant solution.
Back then, those characters weren't easy to type on dos/windows so it seems to be a case of being stuck with the "lowest common denominator" in terms of character input across OSes, reminiscent of C's trigraphs where "??<" was used because keyboards didn't have "{"—thankfully those are long gone. Ligatures are a hack around that but it always struck me as an inelegant solution.