I think to a large extent "the desktop OS itself isn't particularly relevant to the state of computing right now"
is because of Linux (and OSS in general).
We now have a commodity OS and toolset that can be adapted to a huge number of devices from smartphones to servers and thus used for a huge variety of purposes.
Imagine if we had a world where MS (or some other proprietary vendor) was the only game in town on desktop and server, would we have the same number of startups creating MVP webapps?
In fact would the web even exist as it does today?
We now have a commodity OS and toolset that can be adapted to a huge number of devices from smartphones to servers and thus used for a huge variety of purposes.
Imagine if we had a world where MS (or some other proprietary vendor) was the only game in town on desktop and server, would we have the same number of startups creating MVP webapps? In fact would the web even exist as it does today?