Really? Every developer I know in the UK who doesn't develop for an MS stack is running either Linux or OS X, and that's been the case for the last ten years.

I was in academia in Japan and there cygwin and Windows were the favorite tools.

Some of the people used Linux in VMs, on the other hand, some new students installed XP on their notebooks. In 2012.

And I think this was even a rather progressive lab, I suppose industry only uses Windows.

Japan is a Windows loving country so its hardly representative.

Well actually Silicon Valley is an OS X loving region so its hardly representative.

Indeed, they are both extreme. So, what was your point?

Have you been to a software conference outside of the US? Certainly in Europe it's Mac dominated.

I have.

The majority of developers (in Europe or elsewhere) work for large companies and are not the kind to go to software conferences. Note that this doesn't mean they write CRUD; I know people who do amazing GPGPU stuff that will never see the light of day outside their BigCo's internal use. They are the ones Nvidia should be targeting with their drivers.

I'm yet to meet one such developer who'd use a Mac for work. It's my anecdote vs. yours at this point, though, so I might be wrong about Mac users being a vanishingly small minority in this group (but likely not by a huge margin given how the corporate world is).

Edit: It is also quite possible that not all of the developers who present at conferences with Macs use those at work if their workplace isn't BYOD.

I haven't been to any conferences, but I am employed to write for Windows and Mac OSX. Happily, on a Mac with a Windows VM. In the UK too!

But I think you are correct that the majority of development work is in the MS world for business. At least that is the case if you look for work - everything is .NET

At KTH in Sweden GNU/Linux (Ubuntu) is dominant.

Not the case at all. Travel to Europe and see for yourself. :)

Untrue.