So, this year, like every year, the de-facto monopoly company in the desktop OS space has made their product worse but not cheaper, and like every year, well-intentioned people mention there is an alternative built atop community contribution and the ideals of the free software movement, and like every year, it's become something of a Discourse. And because I enjoy recreationally kicking beehives, I want to talk to you about how I think this whole pattern propagates and maybe how we could fix it!
First off, an operating system in the sense people use it colloquially is not a kernel, nor is it a kernel and a collection of utilities, but a hybrid of software components and mental constructs tightly meshed together to form an extension of the user's self (i.e. a tool). An operating system is like writing, or English, or religion; most of the actual parts of it you use are psychological. The process of picking up a new operating system is more enculturation than conscious learning. You can, of course, consciously spend time forcing yourself to engage with a new OS, but you don't just read the manual and then get started using it anymore than you read a english-spanish dictionary and start translating Borges.
This manifests in the regular "arguments", wherein a user of some OS asks what they construe as a 'gotcha' question about one or another feature or workflow, then true believers from another OS answer that the feature or workflow is superfluous, because there's a better one. It also explains some of the seeming irrationality in how people ignore major friction in their preferred OS but are driven wild by minor UI issues in other OSes; they literally do not perceive the major friction because it is part and parcel of "using a computer" for them.
The fact is that the majority of late millennials and early postmillennials were educated in a culture of Windows. Education licenses are not given out because of the goodwill of capitalists; they are intentionally given out to make sure young people learning how to make things happen in the world get exposed to (infected with, even) the memeplex associated with that software. Adobe practically gives their suite away to art schools, mathworks literally gives their Matlab environment to engineering schools, and Microsoft works extensively with the American public school system. Later postmillenials are being first exposed to mobile computing walled gardens (iOS, Android), driving the general cycle of "the teens don't know how to use a computer!" posts.
I use Linux for ~everything; I was raised by a Unix graybeard (well, more like salt and pepper) and my first laptop ran Gentoo, installed for me before I was given the hardware. I use vim for everything and write my formatted text through LaTeX. These are natural and convenient to me; they are inherited culture I was exposed to shortly after becoming literate. I do not like other operating systems; they are alien and unpleasant to me, and their obscure issues make me simply want to give up and return to an environment where I can use familiar tools of strace, syslog, and so on to solve whatever screwed-up mess I've made or found. I imagine Windows power-users feel symmetrically. Frankly, if it didn't benefit rich assholes and shared it's source, there'd be nothing intrinsically wrong with Windows. Next time you decide to discourse about OSes, don't approach it as a technical comparison; approach it as trying to share across a cultural barrier!
[Capitalists: skip this bit and just pretend you didn't see the post in general thx]
Oh, and so, if you want to win the OS wars? Don't bother trying to build Windows: It's Linux Under The Hood This Time, or even Linux: We Tricked Some Of It Into Running Under Windows; go figure out how to give your cultural memes to children! Or, nearly as good, how to onboard the later postmillennials into Computers For Doing Stuff (... that the capitalists would prefer you not do, ... that is complex and funky, ... outside consuming Content) through your cultural context. And don't try to sell them on it as a Economically Rational Action; let them know it's sexy! And punk! Because that is how you infiltrate new memes into people's brains!