I'd want to know a lot more about why macOS dropped ~5% in one month, why unknown doubled in ~1 year, why ChromeOS has more than 50% variance between halves of the school year, how ChromeOS had more users in the middle of summer '23 than the middle of spring '24, and more before I'd make any bold conclusions on how much what is changing and from where.

Windows is shipping with its own Linux already, so it's getting harder to complain about Windows.

Embrace, extend, extinguish.

Could you explain what you mean in your first paragraph? In what sense does Windows ship with Linux?

OP is talking about WSL.

I've seen some technical documentation, such as readmes for source code, that assumes the user is on a Windows laptop running WSL. At this point in time if I see anything mentioning Ubuntu I just assume it's written with WSL/Azure in mind.

There are ads everywhere on Windows. And onedrive hijacks your filesystem.

Even at my fortune 20 company I see: "DNC RATINGS COMPARED TO RNC" clickbait crap. I'm amazed my company lets that garbage through. Probably because we have legacy software + some corruption with purchasing. Sharepoint... really?

No one was ever fired for hiring MS, etc.

I don’t use or plan to use Windows outside of VMs. But I think WSL made a difference to a lot of developers.

Mostly to those that never heard of Virtual Box or VMware Worstation.

It's a first party, better integrated solution. Makes a difference

Two Unix systems and one is increasingly infuriating professionals.

OSX has become a bloated pig of an operating system, and it's not that great as a unix system.

It's so strange. I'm an android user myself but majority of my dev friends are iPhone users. I can't see them switching because they of Apple ecosystem - mainly iMessage. So I'm really curious what's driving people from OSX to Linux

I was a long time Mac user and developer (iOS and macOS) that switched back to Linux after about ten years of using macOS.

The main reasons were mainly getting tired/frustrated at how hostile Apple has been to developers and users. Apple has been slowly turning macOS into iOS, from the UI to slowly trying to lock down the OS. There is also the Apple upgrade treadmill where they force you to upgrade your hardware through planned obsolescence.

And it's probably going to get much worse unless Apple radically change their pricing behavior. It has become very hard for most enthusiasts to justify the price of an high-end Mac...