>not using Linux machines locally despite deploying production software on Linux servers?

no

>isn't 99% of day-to-day development on a Linux box you SSH into anyways?

no

There is a myth that software developers are good with computers but that's mostly not the case, hence heavy mac/windows usage, harder to break than someone with linux machine and root.

Also Ubuntu kinda breaks more for normal users.

You're forgetting the good developers who want to minimize the time spent dealing with issues or idiosyncrasies at the OS level.

I am one of the developers who maintain our embedded Linux distro. I use WSL2 to compile it. I used Linux desktops for 15 years as my primary desktop previously and I will never go back to Linux desktop. I spend less to no time on Windows for configuring the HiDPI displays, finding hacks to make presentations and chat software work, dealing with dodgy drivers.

As if we’re being protected from ourselves instead of choosing windows or Mac?

> Are FAANG and FAANG-like developers not using Linux machines locally despite deploying production software on Linux servers?

Correct, because The Powers That Be often won't let them.

As some have said, reality is quite different. For example, my two last jobs:

- company uses Microsoft stack (.net, SQL server, windows server), so its 100 employees are also on windows - company let's its 50 employees pick what they want, which is mostly MacOS

Why? Because it's less effort maintaining, and you don't run into compatibility problems for your other programs. With virtualization and docker, you can simulate your production servers much more easily than before!

Personally, I am a fan of Linux, having used Ubuntu, Debian and Manjaro, but nowadays use windows+wsl+docker for everything.

Some acquisitions at FAANG I’m at have carve outs with legal and finance for docker desktop. Originally internal projects are all on internal tooling for compliance reasons

Nope, at least here there is our own homemade version of containers. And the idea of running anything local is not really realistic anyways!

It's also for Linux.

Sure, it might exist for Linux, but what's the point of using it on Linux? The only reason I've ever ran it on other OSes is because they don't support Docker Engine directly.

Why would I spend my time on Linux? Most code is platform independent. And why would most time be spend over SSH?

to let you master Vim like a God! ;)