That said, it's still a VM and Windows is still a PITA to deal with. Just today I wanted install a script as a Windows service. Windows won't do it. You have to Google for 20 minutes, then download some .exe and use that as a wrapper. The simplest things are difficult or impossible, and I don't think shoving your life into a VM is going to solve all that.
I think even a big chunk of Windows users would agree with that too.
However, the point is, it's still massively, unbelievably popular and not supporting Windows is like having a web app that doesn't run on Safari (which IMHO also suck from a developers perspective, pretty okay when just using).
You can get away with it, yes, but your audience will be (depending on context) unnecessarily limited.
They also realized that the crowd that buys Macs to do UNIX development doesn't care about Linux, they only want a POSIX like environment.
And since GNU/Linux has eroded the other UNIXes, the Linux kernel ABI has become more relevant than POSIX, that is all.
And if you're using WSL you are using Linux effectively. Windows is just that UI around you. Microsoft makes some good products/services and I think they have shifted in strategy. They are not so interested in what _specific_ APIs/OS you use (Win32 or Linux ...) as long as you do it "inside" Windows on the Desktop or on Azure in the Cloud. It clear that the Linux platform is dominating because Linux is everywhere from servers to mobiles.
One of the parent comments was complaining about lack of good _native_ windows support in Crystal. I've responded to why it may not be critical to have good _native_ windows support anymore above in detail...
Many people also don't use WSL. Many don't even have the basic nix tools on their path.
You may say that they aren't your target audience, but many new technologies weren't popular until they made them their target audience.
Linux on the desktop has always been a joke, but it's even more irrelevant now. You run Windows as your main development OS and when you're ready to deploy your app to Linux, you launch WSL or run a CI/CD pipeline.
But there is now zero reason to ever run Linux as the main OS on your desktop.
s/Linux/Windows/ /s
More seriously, i don't understand your point. Just because you're happy with Microsoft's practices doesn't mean free distros are all "a joke" or "irrelevant". Many people use GNU/Linux as a daily driver and we're more than satisfied.
Personal opinion: i just don't understand the appeal for Windows. MacOS at least has some design/UX guidelines which you can like or dislike but they're consistent about... Windows has just so many anti-patterns i don't have enough fingers to count. The only times i ever needed windows was because of phone-related crapware, and even then Wine was more than enough. Why would i need Windows at all?
If anything, WSL is making Linux more irrelevant as a development environment, and Windows 11 is going to take this to the next level (take a look at Hanselman's demo video [1]).
Yes, production runs in majority on Linux but development happens massively on Windows. With macOS a distant second and Linux barely used as desktops.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4VYjxzx2us