Surely you can understand that Linux kernel development might fall outside of "so much of the ecosystem", and in this case the statement still holds!

Not a Mac fan but you don't test kernel changes in a VM?

Statistically, basically all kernel developers are working on hardware support of one form or another. They might run changes in an appropriate simulator[1] if they have it, but the community of people able to do the bulk of their work in a desktop VM is quite small.

[1] OS X support for which tends to be a pain point too, while most vendors tend to have some kind of Linux product this is still very much a windows world.

Yes.

At our company, we do a lot of kernel development. Most devs are issued Macs, some Thinkpads with Windows. Very few run Linux locally, as IT doesn't like it.

We have Linux shell servers for development. They compile much faster than laptops anyway. The actual test systems are separate as well. You don't want to test on the machine you develop on generally (it'd be extremely annoying to not be able to edit code while waiting for the reboot to get the new kernel, and to loose your open windows for every iteration. Also what if it oopses?), and in our case that wouldn't work anyway (special HW).

Most use vim in screen, and VS Code with it's native SSH remote host support is also very nice.

If it works for dozens of our engineers, it can work for you if you're willing.

Just curious do kernel developers use mac