I’m interviewing for a software dev job currently (it’s in the initial stages). If things work out, I’d absolutely prefer a work laptop with Linux installed (I personally use PopOS but any distro will do), a Mac will be second choice, but I absolutely cannot tolerate Windows, I abhor it, I hate it… (If all computers left on earth have Windows I’d either quit this field or just quit Earth).
Sometimes it’s possible to tell if they use Windows or not, for example, jobs with dotnet/C# are most likely using windows, but not in my case.
Anyways, is it too weird to ask what kind of laptop they provide to their employees? And to also specifically ask for a Linux (or anything but windows) work laptop?
I’m not a software developer, but I absolutely do coding and one of the standard questions I ask is what OS they run on official company approved laptops. Other then a shitty bank I worked at for a few years (bad idea, but at least I got a pension out of it), all of them allow windows, osx, and at least one flavor of linux. If they don’t allow that stuff, you should just turn down the offer anyway.
You should use whatever the majority of the team is using. If you want to use Linux then you need to make it a priority to find a team that has at least a few people using it. You don’t want to be the only person having issues setting up their local dev environment.