> Of course changing the default to Linux would increase numbers overnight, that's not what I'm arguing.

I now understand what you mean by this, but it took me reading your comment three times to get it. You quoted "I would argue that linux would need to be installed by default for that to change dramatically." and then wrote right afterward "I disagree", which did make it sound like that was the thing you were disagreeing with.

I think that one of the implicit assumptions of "linux would need to be installed by default for that to change dramatically" was "without any other significant changes happening". I think that this is a reasonable assumption, because you can always imagine some extreme scenario e.g. Microsoft announces that it's going to hand over all user data to some large government, and millions of people stop using Windows overnight, or maybe they start charging $500/year for Windows 11 Home Edition - both highly unlikely, but also both causing Linux to gain marketshare without becoming a default. So, the assumption "barring major event" is a sound one.

...especially given that the quality improvement necessary to see a major Linux adoption uptick would be...probably a once-in-a-century computing event, given how much better Linux has become (and worse Windows has become) over the past decade with no significant change in Linux desktop use.

> https://distrochooser.de/ is the first link I got for "which distro should i use"

That's because you altered my query from "which linux distro should i use" to "which distro should i use". Actually using the query I cited comes up with [1], which lists "Ubuntu" as the very first item, along with that same value being cited in the Google infobox in the search results. Expanding "distro" to "distribution" (which a new Linux convert is likely to do) also gives similar results, so your example isn't representative.

> 20 minutes later that Ubuntu user will encounter their first Arch user while asking a question about why Network Manager is doing something silly, who will naturally advise them to switch to Arch

This is something that you're repeatedly cited, but I've never had happen to me, nor even seen happen to someone else in an online conversation, after going through thousands of questions...

> Just more 'Works for me! (tm)", another common thing in literally any discussion about Linux.

These situations aren't remotely comparable. "Just works for me!" takes a single data point and extrapolates it to invalidate others' experiences. I'm taking thousands of datapoints (things that I've read: forum posts, Stack Exchange threads, IRC chat sessions) and generalizing that to say that the experience that you're describing is unlikely - which is 100% valid, because unlike hardware issues, every web search is distinct. If "switch to <other distro>" is common advice, then the probability of me encountering it once as I search the internet approaches 1.0 very quickly.

So, yes, if I've trawled through thousands of various kinds of internet posts about Linux and never encountered someone saying that a question-asker should switch distros, then it is not "likely" at all.

[1] https://itsfoss.com/best-linux-beginners/