You can try to compare it to macOS all you want, the comparison is still wrong. For starters, I can't just go to Apples website to download an image that will boot on my PC.

"Linux" (as in Kernel) no. Distributions yes. Just look at their websites when downloading.

>Linux will have that marketshare regardless, because 99% of Walmart PCs Karin buys simply come with Windows. If the reverse was true, guess what marketshare Windows would have?

Still Windows. But this is a purely hypothetical question, nobody knows if the software world would have developed differently if Windows would not be preinstalled.

> For starters, I can't just go to Apples website to download an image that will boot on my PC.

Are you auguring about licensing here? macOS's obviously not open-source so you cannot just download it off their website for free but you can absolutely boot in on your PC, there's an entire Hackintosh community around it.

If what you're trying to say is that a Hackintosh is not a supported configuration, there are entire databases with supported hardware for Linux. If you have an incompatible component, you're running an unsupported configuration.

But moving onto Windows, the hardware there needs to be compatible too, it's just that going into Walmart you're likely to run into PCs designed with Windows in mind, due to the whole IBM/MS pact of the 80s and the resulting IBM PC clone industry preinstalling Microsoft software ever since. Linux came after MS was already preinstalled on most PCs, so you have to specifically seek it out.

Pretending that this isn't the case, the playing field was fair and "Windows" just won is dishonest at best.

> But this is a purely hypothetical question, nobody knows if the software world would have developed differently if Windows would not be preinstalled.

If you're telling me that in a world where 99% of PCs are Linux preinstalled, kids are familiar with Linux from school and nonetheless people are going out of their way to manually install Windows on them, I think you're selling me a bridge.

I don't see people demanding the ability to install Windows onto a Raspberry Pi for example, (yes there's Windows for IoT, not the same).

>Are you auguring about licensing here? macOS's obviously not open-source so you cannot just download it off their website for free but you can absolutely boot in on your PC, there's an entire Hackintosh community around it.

Yes. But that's not from Apple directly and not really the point here. macOS on PCs is for the hardcore, the 1%, the people who like to tinker with their system. Not as an alternative to Windows. There is no guarantee that the next update will survive a reboot.

>If you're telling me that in a world where 99% of PCs are Linux preinstalled, kids are familiar with Linux from school and nonetheless people are going out of their way to manually install Windows on them, I think you're selling me a bridge.

Ideally there would have been no OS preinstalled and you had to chose yourself. But again, hypothetical example. Would Winodws still be dominant in this example? My guess is yes, based purely on how GUI friendly the OS is.