> OSX has decimated the Linux on consumer baremetal use case. By consumer baremetal you probably mean laptops and desktop PCs, because if I would include route

> OSX has decimated the Linux on consumer baremetal use case. By consumer baremetal you probably mean laptops and desktop PCs, because if I would include routers, NASes and phones, your argument would be dead on arrival. Even if we limit ourselves to laptop/desktops, OSX did not decimate Linux, because the Linux desktop never actually had a high market share to begin with. All the charts I have seen show that the Linux Desktop market share was consistently low, the existence of the Mac didn't affect it much. The 3 main reasons the Linux desktop isn't reaching bigger audiences are: - driver issues, which is partially because of the way kernel development works - no one good consistent UI - too many distros and versions and configurations to support If you would erase the Mac from history, these wouldn't be affected. The consistently low market share has little to do with the kernel. > but the intent is clear and confirmed. The interest was there with Google Wave, Google Reader, Dart, Google Plus, Picasa and Google Desktop Search as well among other things, companies can change their mind. > but containers and platforms like Kubernetes serve in part to weaken Linux's position in that space. Containers were made possible by Linux kernel features, the container images are all Linux, I don't see how that weakens it, at the end of the day, your application still runs on Linux. > followed by Azure-specific features being made available through proprietary extensions making the next versions of those containers some combination of a Linux-compatible userspace mixed with WSL-specific extensions for the Azure-specific magic. I'm failing to see what does this speculation has to do with the original argument. > It would be pretty sad if in another decade the only time we encounter Linux running on baremetal is on gadgets for tinkering like the raspberry pi. There are plenty of laptops and desktops that work well with Linux if that's what you need, there are vendors like System76 that are dedicated to giving you just that.