I'm not sure if you're claiming that Linux is a "major desktop operating system" (desktop added for clarity based on the context of your statement), but if you are your statement is badly misinformed.

I use Linux in (many) VMs where I have to in order to run esoteric toolchains for embedded stuff. There is no distribution of Linux that provides bulletproof basic desktop usability anywhere near the level of OS X or Windows 10. Nothing even in the same ballpark. And I've used Linux since the days when Slackware came on a set of 3.5" floppies, so I'm not some Linux hater or incompetent here -- I've got a significant amount of experience with the OS in many of its flavors. When you can get any distribution of Linux to accurately handle plugging in external monitors every time, maybe we can talk.

Xcode is an excellent IDE - it's second really only to Visual Studio.

My only complaint about Macs today is the Touch Bar, because they replaced my f-keys with it and it's useless to me as a developer. That's at least partially mitigated by my das keyboard.

Nearly every other dev I know uses a MacBook Pro. The Mac Pro is a production machine for movies, it's not really part of the discussion here.

Of course I am claiming Linux is a major operating system. It is the most widely deployed operating system in the world, after all.

For desktop in bare metal, Linux is extremely bad, yes, but most people use it as a desktop in a VM within another host OS.

Xcode is an excellent IDE... if you don't know better or are into iOS/Swift development (due to legal reasons).

I know nobody that uses a MacBook Pro in my field. I know it is common in webdev and specially mobile dev fields, though, so I give you that.

It's not a major operating system outside of server use.

Your claim was this:

"As for the desktop features, all 3 major operating systems are the same. Claiming otherwise is not knowing how to use each of them." -- that's a demonstrably false statement, which you're apparently trying to walk back now by claiming server installations are the same as desktop use. Linux has essentially zero desktop market share, because it's a very poor desktop OS, and is in no way comparable to either of the leading desktop operating systems, which was your claim. And no one I know uses Linux as a desktop inside another OS. Plenty of people use an ssh session into a Linux machine to compile things, but that's not using it as a desktop. Very few people would want to use an OS in a VM as their main desktop, especially since that doesn't even resolve the issues that make it a terrible desktop OS!

I'm using Xcode on a MacBook Pro to do C++ development for an embedded system right now. I've used it to write C applications in the past. I don't do webdev ever and generally don't do mobile. Nearly everyone in my field uses a MacBook Pro, for everything from firmware development up. The webdev kids seem to be the the Linux zealots from what I've seen.

> It's not a major operating system outside of server use.

You are forgetting Android, embedded, web servers, networking equipment of all kinds, HPC and supercomputing, HFT, automotive, aerospace and many other fields.

Linux is, by far, the operating system with the most deployed systems out there.

> that's a demonstrably false statement, which you're apparently trying to walk back now by claiming server installations are the same as desktop use

I am not backing from anything, and I have not claimed anything about servers so far until this post.

Linux is the third desktop operating system, whether you like it or not. At home, in fact, it is not that far from macOS (4%), Linux (1%).

Given you talk about "demonstrable" things, I refer you to surveys like Steam's.

At work, Windows is even more prevalent, and those surveys do not include VM (work/non-gaming) usage where most people I know use it.

> Nearly everyone in my field uses a MacBook Pro, for everything from firmware development up

Perhaps you are in the US, where Apple has a disproportionate market share (up to 30% IIRC) compared to anywhere else in the world. I also work on embedded and no one uses a Mac here, nor Xcode. A ThinkPad or a Dell with a Linux VM is the proper choice. Xcode for firmware development sounds very odd, too.

The entire context of the discussion was desktop operating systems, not embedded devices. Aerospace doesn't run Linux on anything I've ever even heard of, that would be foolhardy to the extreme. They're running things like QNX and different variants of real time operating systems. Automotive does run it on non-critical things, but even that is pretty silly. Most critical systems on vehicles do not run Linux either. Most networking gear doesn't run Linux -- some consumer things do, but many run some form of BSD or some proprietary OS(ios).

Android is barely Linux (and if you want to add mobile phones into the discussion you'd have to realize that iOS is actually the same thing as OS X..), and the rest aren't desktop operating systems at all -- and many of them don't run Linux either.

But again, the context, and your comment, was about the desktop. Linux isn't there.

You call Linux the "third" desktop operating system by default because its desktop share isn't exactly zero. It's quite close to zero, but not exactly. That's all.

Windows & OS X are the only major desktop operating systems.

And yes, I'm in the US. I'm not sure that really matters that much. Obviously different shops will do things differently. You don't use a Mac, so your worldview is that they aren't a thing. That's simply not correct. There's a wide world outside your bubble. A Thinkpad / Dell with a Linux VM is your choice, not "the proper" choice.

I'm not an OS zealot -- I use both of the major desktop operating systems, and I use others where they're appropriate -- have used Linux for decades. Until Linux has MS Office running natively on it, it will never have a desktop market. No, it's still not the year of the Linux Desktop. Probably never will be.

And Xcode is a perfectly usable C & C++ IDE. Why wouldn't you use it for firmware?

> Aerospace doesn't run Linux on anything I've ever even heard of, that would be foolhardy to the extreme.

It will shock you to learn that most stuff out there now works on Linux and soft RT Linux. For hard RT where Linux does not fit the bill, specialized operating systems are used.

> Android is barely Linux

It is actually 100% Linux.

> the rest aren't desktop operating systems at all

Luckily not everyone working on about half a dozen of them thinks like you!

> You call Linux the "third" desktop operating system by default because its desktop share isn't exactly zero.

1% is "near zero"? So millions and millions of desktops are "zero"?

We should be telling Canonical, Valve, Microsoft and hundreds of other companies that depend on "desktop" Linux to work!

> And yes, I'm in the US. I'm not sure that really matters that much.

As I explained, the market share in the US is wildly different than in the rest of the world.

> You don't use a Mac, so your worldview is that they aren't a thing.

Hah. I have used Apple systems and Xcode for many years. I own (have owned, my last was right before the Touch Bar debacle) several Macs in my life. That is why I know a decade ago they were on top of their game and now the ecosystem sucks for devs.

In another thread I said I think the culture of the Mac died with Jobs and the company switched to the profitable part too much (the iPhones and such).

> Until Linux has MS Office running natively on it, it will never have a desktop market.

Desktop market != Office market. Of course Linux has almost no market on typical companies with employees doing Word and Excel 8-5.

> And Xcode is a perfectly usable C & C++ IDE. Why wouldn't you use it for firmware?

Because everything else is just plainly better, or open source, or free, or cross-platform, or...

Yes, Xcode is perfectly usable for C++. SublimeText + plugins is perfectly usable, too. I can also do my job pretty well with gedit or vim or emacs. And if needed I can do it with bloody Notepad too. That does not mean I choose them nor that they are the best.

Not in aerospace or anywhere else where life & safety are at stake. I'm quite familiar with those worlds, and Linux doesn't exist there.

Android is not 100% Linux. It's a phone OS that runs a Linux kernel and essentially nothing else that even looks like a desktop Linux (remember, that's the discussion).

Yes, 1% is near zero. For desktop use, the only people who use Linux are devs who are completely buried in the Linux world, and OS zealots. The market outside of that vanishingly small sector of desktop users is zero -- not close to zero, not 1%, zero. No one runs Linux on the desktop because they want to run Linux on the desktop -- you don't even do it. They run it because they have no other alternative, or because their religion demands it.

Nothing has changed in the Mac "ecosystem" to make their machines worse for devs in the last ten years. I'm really at a loss to even begin to understand what you are talking about here. It simply isn't so.

Again, your opinion is that you don't like Xcode. Nothing else you've posted suggests a real fact.

I've written plenty of code in vi -- even in ed, in Netbeans, whatever. I like Xcode because it works really well, and if you're in the Mac ecosystem it's designed to work well there. I don't care if an IDE is open source, I don't care if it's "free" (Xcode is), and I don't care if it's cross platform. Those items mean nothing to me, they do nothing for me. If I need to write on a linux system I'll pull up netbeans or eclipse. Or I'll write it in an ssh session using vi. So what?

You're continuing to state your opinions as though they are some objective fact. You don't like Macs for some reason since Jobs died. That's your opinion. It doesn't match that of many others.

I think you're missing the point where I treat the "top class desktop operating system with top class unix environment support and tools" as a whole, and not as two separate things. To me MacOS is the top class desktop operating system with top class unix env support, nothing else gets close to this definition. Other operating systems could get close to other definitions, maybe even surpass it, but not to this one.