Obviously my case is a bit of an outlier, but once you add up enough outliers you might see a real impact.
Edit: I'm really going to miss the Mac. As much as I love the Linux CLI, Linux GUIs are a huge mess. A simple example: on MacOS you can use Emacs style keyboard shortcuts (^A, ^E, ^K, etc) to manipulate text in just about any text field in any app. AFAIK no such thing exist in Linux, which generally uses Windows style shortcuts (Home, End) that a much more limited. Another example is the ever-present "Help" menu in Mac apps that can be used to find/run other menu items.
Last time I setup a Linux box I was pleasantly surprised I could get a lot of the stuff I was used to, thanks to Electron. While I prefer native apps, having an official app that has feature parity to Windows and macOS will always win out, and I don’t think the average user even knows the difference.
The biggest weakness of Linux on the desktop going mainstream always seemed to be the lack of commercial software. That’s where OS X shined with developers. It was a Unix system that could also run Photoshop and Office, without hoping Wine worked, or relying on converting file types to maintain compatibility with the rest of the world… and hoping that worked.
The more native apps don’t matter, the better I see Linux doing.
I think his has also helped Windows. I remember several years ago trying Windows again for the first time in a long time. It felt mostly the same has 15 years prior. Looking around for app recommendations, and it was the same stuff from 15 years ago with the same UIs for the most part. No one was adopting the changes MS was trying to push. Electron comes along and now developers are putting their app everywhere, when for a while it seemed like it was mainly phone, macOS, and web. Windows and Linux users were seemingly expected to just use the web apps. While Electron may technical be the same under the hood, having something local for often used and mission critical apps is very nice.
GTK used to have functionality for using Emacs shortcuts in text fields, but they removed it in GTK 4: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/1669
One issue was that because there's no separate command key, you'd end up with other functionality overriding the shortcuts (i.e. Ctrl+P would bring up the print dialog).
I also HATED the fact that I has to give Apple my credit card to get it to work. Apple treats your laptop like it owns it. I was unable to delete Itunes and had to sign Terms of Service that I didn't want.
Get what to work?
4% is pretty impressive if the vast majority of users are actually installing Linux themselves (USB ISO, UEFI/BIOS). It might indicate that we're (possibly) reaching the upper limits of power (tech-savvy) users.
If the vast majority are from computers with Linux already pre-installed, that would be more amazing to me. It tells me that the entire Linux ecosystem is becoming more robust and self-supporting.
More discussion a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576200
And yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39600172
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38853877 63 days ago, 345 comments Linux hits nearly 4% desktop user share on Statcounter (gamingonlinux.com)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39252801 30 days ago, 79 comments Linux has reached 4% for the partial Feburary 2024 data on StatCounter (github.com/openstatslab)
Your post above from yesterday has 179 comments.
https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/9145439?hl=en
You can also get ChromeOS as an ISO, but they mostly advertise it to enterprises to reuse old hardware, and not to end users. https://chromeenterprise.google/intl/en_uk/os/chromeosflex/
There's really no market there.
See also: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/ (Today I learned that ChromeOS is somewhat dependent on Portage from Gentoo)
Crostini gives you Linux container inside ChromeOS. If you want pure Linux experience you can install whatever distro you want as well.
I use it regularly, on two Fujitsu and Lenovo laptops, neither being Chromebooks (hence your last requirement - the rest are available also in ChromeOS "proper").
Because most effort seems to be in the other direction.