Aside from the cost of licensing Windows which makes small-sized non-Windows VMs cheaper, there's been a strong pro-Linux bias in academia for a long time that nobody likes to talk about.
> there's been a strong pro-Linux bias in academia for a long time that nobody likes to talk about.
Who doesn't like to talk about it? It's so much easier to integrate components on Linux over windows. Why would anyone willingly use windows for data analysis?