Linux is super fragmented (and generally has been historically).
If more people in Linux agreed to develop, use, and support the same distro–similarly to how most of us use the same kernel–then that distro would probably be better than Windows and more people would move to Linux.
Sure they are, if your sources are drama articles calling the death of nix when 15 out of almost 4000 maintainers leave…
It is indeed an effective tool to scare people. Too bad it works