ChromeOS did not poke a hole in the consumer space. It’s the B2B of hardware where the user is not the buyer. To a first approximation, no one wants a ChromeOS based computer for their home anymore than they want to run Salesforce at home. It is cheap and from what I have heard, Google’s MDM software is top notch.

Android “won” as pyrrhic of a victory as it is since Android manufacturers besides Samsung make very little profit and every one who has money (again to a first approximation) buys iPhones. It won because Google gave it away, shared ad revenue with OEMs and it bent over backwards to the carriers and Apple wouldn’t.

And yes Linux would save OEMs maybe $30 on licensing Windows. But OEMs make mire than that on bundleware.

It's so simple. It's because windows DID have a much better desktop experience in the past, for decades, and they built a trillion dollar company around it. It's no longer the clear winner though, and they are simply surfing the momentum of having an existing user base that doesn't want to relearn apps and UIs, apps and games that only work on windows due to the size of the user base, and general marketing and sales and existing corporate contracts.

None of this has anything to do with the quality of the desktop of Linux or windows. If Linux had 75% market share I promise you all those things above would quickly become true for Linux as well.