[mattmanser]

Furthermore, most operating systems already have enough of the basics installed

Maybe most operating systems do, but most laptops and PCs don't. Like 92% of laptops and PCs. Which makes your comment seem divorced from reality.

Worse still a lot of programming guides assume you have a linux variant which is so far from reality it's painful to watch. Though it's got a lot better recently as the ruby/python package managers are a lot easier to install on windows now.

A year or so back I was having a discussion with another HN user who was running free Python programming workshops. He actually ended up specifying no windows because it took so long to get everything working on them.

I suspect the more novice a programmer, less likely they are to have a Mac. You will only have a mac if you're rich, a programmer or your parents are rich. It's not an entry level OS. Let's not even pretend about linux.