This is across three separate startups and companies. It's infuriating.
Most embedded stuff I work on has less than 100kb memory. No way in hell it could run an OS.
But if you meant programming the devices... So many vendors compile chains simply don't work on Windows and are badly hacked up versions of gcc.
In my experience the decent vendor provided setups that actually work are all on Windows. STMCube and Keil for ST, Atmel Studio, Code Composer Studio for TI.
Yes you can absolutely compile on *Nix using GCC, but none of the vendors target their tooling for anything other than Windows.
Atmel [0] absolutely does.
ST [1] does.
TI [2] does.
You want to run that one by me again?
[0] http://www.atmel.com/tools/atmelavrtoolchainforlinux.aspx
I didn't know that ST provided STMCube for other platforms. That's the project generation tool (which is great), it's not the IDE debugging system you get with Keil (which is also great).
You've linked the 'lite' TI toolkit. CCS is available on Linux, but is even less reliable than CCS on Windows.
I'm not trying to argue that all development is done on Windows, or that it's even the best platform to do it on. I am merely pointing out that Windows is the first platform that is targeted for development by the big vendors. Also (more anecdotally) the majority of the companies that I work with and encounter do their embedded development on Windows, until you get to the size of part that is running some form of Linux.
Anecdotally, I just had Atmel recommend a switch from Windows to Linux, as their compiler toolchain "can work better there".
This space is more diverse than just Windows, and growing in that direction more and more. Atmel, Cadence and Qualcomm are just a few who welcome you with open arms.
*web developer
I don't know to many good systems engineers or security/forensics people who don't use Linux.