I have the same experience with macOS as you (Java/web developer here). I find it quite unintuitive and generally lacking in the usability department. E.g.: it is a joke that I cannot deactivate the global menu and I also cannot place the global menu on both of my monitors without making the monitors separate desktops. I find this "our way or the highway" mentality of Apple quite repelling.
Luckily, I can use Linux now at my workplace and that alone made me much happier. I have recently converted a colleague as well. Strangely, he prefers Gnome3 but yeah...whatever makes him happy.
I hope the KDE guys never go bonkers like the Gnome/RedHat guys and keep up the nice modularity they have achieved by now so other DEs can reuse some of their functionality.
A agree with your metrics and your conclusions as well.
The Linux desktop is now in a much better overall shape than it has ever been.
The desktops themselves have reached a fairly polished state. Much less annoyance than before (like multi-monitor settings and other basic stuff). I use Cinnamon on my Mint laptop and KDE Plasma on my Neon dev workstation and both are fairly polished and stable.
OSS applications like Kdenlive are also getting polished and adding more professional features. I also use a macOS laptop and I actually think that it is now as easy/quick to edit videos with Kdenlive on my Linux machines than with iMovie on the mac.
KDEConnect is another great example, it is just brilliant.
LibreOffice is also progressing rapidly with other productivity tools.
Using both macOS and Linux desktops for java/web development, I actually think that Linux is better, faster and more stable in most respect. E.g.: Finder is a joke, it is even worse than Explorer, none of them come close to proper Linux file managers like Krusader, Dolphin or Caja.
All in all, the Linux desktop space has seen great improvements and the hard work seems to be paying off now (see the latest upwards trend on Linux desktop market share)
Guys, keep up the good work on both KDE Plasma and LXQt!!!
Your work is greatly appreciated by many-many of us, happy Linux users.
Luckily, I can use Linux now at my workplace and that alone made me much happier. I have recently converted a colleague as well. Strangely, he prefers Gnome3 but yeah...whatever makes him happy.