Yes, a common refrain.

> You've got Linux distribution releases that are supported for up to 10 years (like RHEL and Ubuntu LTS) by teams a couple of orders of magnitude smaller than either of MacOS or Windows.

Yes, and they're not really equivalent because they keep everything stable. An OS like Windows or MacOS keeps the platform stable and allows applications to be bleeding edge or not as desired. This way applications are typically distributed on Linux make this very difficult, hence things like Flatpak.

Regarding the team size, I can only say that if everyone worked on the same "distribution", that gap would be significantly reduced. Instead the Linux Desktop world delights in duplicating effort, so here we are.

> But it's in the nature of free software world to want to mix and match, so the idea of a singular Linux Desktop does not exist. You should treat each one of them as a separate OS, which is unfortunate, but realistic.

If that is the policy, then no one should be surprised when developers choose not to target a non-platform that doesn't exist.

...for that matter WINE is even able to make Linux compatible with Windows applications to a great extent, and they certainly aren't backed with Microsoft's wealth of resources.