Just like some of the Linux Desktop's compete with OSX.
It's exactly like Apple creating iOS, before iOS, we didn't have fancy colour touch phones that were visually appealing and usable. We had... Windows Mobile with a stylus that was great for work but sucked for the consumer.
Because of Apple / iOS we /had/ Windows Phone, we have Android, we've had attempts from other companies to try be competitive in this area.
There are features of Linux Desktop they probably would never have existed if they hadn't been created on Windows or OSX. JUST like there are features on Windows that wouldn't have existed if they hadn't been created on Linux or OSX.
Competition is good for all of us, regardless if you use Windows, or Linux, or OSX.
Competition is good, but it is entirely speculation whether windows promoted or stalled progress by virtue of being a monopoly; my vote is “stalled”.
But you don't need Windows or OSX for competition.
There are already multiple DE's and WM's for Linux that are already competing with each other.
> There are features of Linux Desktop they probably would never have existed if they hadn't been created on Windows or OSX.
I doubt that. In an alternate universe where windows and OSX never existed, I'm pretty sure someone somewhere would have thought up those features and implemented them.
Okay, let's imagine a world where for some crazy reason Linux is the only OS. It is already it's own competition because it's open source. If someone doesn't like something about it, they can just fork it. You can't do that with proprietary OS's.
So I don't see how losing windows is problem due to lack of competition.