Why did we end up with windows...
In the dawn of time people who bought computers bought all sorts of different OS and GUI because they liked the manufacturer, the price or the apps on a particular brand. Then people started getting computers at work, invariably PC AT with MSDOS and eventually windows. When the shelled out for a PC at home they wanted what they were used to at work, so they could share apps, and data.
Time has moved on and as the browser and cloud computing are starting to dominate, the whole OS debate should be lessening, This is probably the last Hurrah for OSs anyway and what sits behind Chromium or Firefox will become less and less important apart from a few of us who (like the people at the dawn of time) enjoy playing with the computer rather than the apps.
(That actually could be the allure of windows, I used to spend a lot of time on admin, scanning, defragging, etc, thinking I was doing something "useful". Now I have enough free time to write to Tech Republic!)
