Out of all the Free Software operating systems, Linux has the greatest hardware support (by a longshot). At times, it has even had better support for consumer hardware than Windows (e.g. when Microsoft changed the driver architecture with the introduction of Windows Vista, a lot of old drivers never got ported, or with the introduction of the TPM requirement, a lot of CPUs are no longer officially supported in W11 - though they can be made to work with third-party hacks). This is the primary reason why it is the most popular. It is the only alternative operating system that you can install on just about anything and have good chances of it working. There are other alternatives like FreeBSD/OpenBSD, but you need to start being a bit more discerning about which hardware you purchase when running these, and you may still forgo some modern niceties, like robust Bluetooth support.
Out of all the Free Software operating systems, Linux has the greatest hardware support (by a longshot). At times, it has even had better support for consumer hardware than Windows (e.g. when Microsoft changed the driver architecture with the introduction of Windows Vista, a lot of old drivers never got ported, or with the introduction of the TPM requirement, a lot of CPUs are no longer officially supported in W11 - though they can be made to work with third-party hacks). This is the primary reason why it is the most popular. It is the only alternative operating system that you can install on just about anything and have good chances of it working. There are other alternatives like FreeBSD/OpenBSD, but you need to start being a bit more discerning about which hardware you purchase when running these, and you may still forgo some modern niceties, like robust Bluetooth support.