In a previous life, I built and maintained a Dockerized CI pipeline (using Windows containers) for Bluetooth headphone firmware. Qualcomm only provides tools for e.g. CSR8675 platforms for Windows.

What’s worse is in some cases the source code has to be commingled with the SDK itself, so building projects can mean copying your source code and modifications over top of the installed SDK in order to produce a build. Docker’s ephemeral disks are a lifesaver in stupid situations like this.

Building windows client applications that need to talk to a containerized service. The service could run on a remote server, but for development it is convenient to run it on the same Windows laptop that I'm doing the Windows development on. I've already switched to podman on Windows, and I'm evaluating switching to podman on Linux for the sake of being a lighter weight, and looking like a good way to run pods on a single node.

If you work in a corporate environment the OS you use is dictated by IT policy.