As a user, what usually matters to me is what software I'm able to run on it. So even if people don't actually care about the OS itself, they will care that X runs on it but Y doesn't, which, given enough users, may push X to support that OS.

I actually daily drive Linux (Arch) because Windows is a PITA I'm not willing to put up with. But there are things I use which still don't run on Linux (Photoshop and Lightroom), so I'm actually thinking of getting a Mac again instead of having a second PC / dual boot, even though I know that can also be irritating (though less so than Windows).

"Who controls the OS" isn't that important to me. What matters is that it gets out of my way and lets me do what I want to do with as little friction as possible. I know Linux being free means I can go and hack on it however I like. But I also have to contend with reality: I can't reasonably think that I (personnally) am going to hack on the kernel or on some desktop environment in any meaningful measure, so I still have to put up with whatever other people figure is best.

But if there are enough people like me, including those who don't actually care about what OS they're running, maybe the apps I want to run will adopt Linux. But that only matters because, as it turns out, it's the OS which I find the less irritating to use. If tomorrow Windows 12 finally became sane, I'd switch in a heartbeat. I'm not married to Linux.