Maybe's its because I've been working for 20+ years but I actually care very little about what OS I have to use - just about every contemporary OS is "good enough" to get work done on.
However, obsessing about this kind of stuff just seems kind of wrong for most start-ups - the amount of time you spend thinking about this kind of thing probably doesn't give you the reward you think it does and you might well miss out on the extra benefits of testing stuff in a more heterogeneous environment.
In this day and age thinking about this kind of stuff without considering VMs is silly - they are more than fast enough to use as day-to-day dev environments.
However, obsessing about this kind of stuff just seems kind of wrong for most start-ups - the amount of time you spend thinking about this kind of thing probably doesn't give you the reward you think it does and you might well miss out on the extra benefits of testing stuff in a more heterogeneous environment.
In this day and age thinking about this kind of stuff without considering VMs is silly - they are more than fast enough to use as day-to-day dev environments.