OS X has like a million things that Apple hyped up for each release and then promptly abandoned/forgot about. And they're all in your face. Launchpad, widgets, the notifications sidebar, etc. But they still had time to swap the default system font twice in the last two years.
As least the old cruft in Windows is usually kept in the Control Panel or other oft-unused parts of the system.
There's a spectrum of Linux as far as open source aggressiveness is concerned. Ubuntu caught flack a decade ago for including an MP3 decoder and other proprietary bits of software. (I mean, today they're the ones supplying Windows 10 with its Linux terminal emulation or whatever.) While it's certainly possible to find Stallman-approved distros, I believe the most popular ones are the flavors that kinda shrug and go "meh" at closed-source stuff and include it when it makes things more convenient for the users. Ubuntu and Elementary fall into this bracket, while Fedora is probably the most OSS-compatible you can get (GNU-heads
complain that they don't go far enough since they include proprietary firmware so that you don't brick your system on installation. The horror!)
I use Gimp even though I have a Creative Cloud subscription because it's what I learned ages ago and it does the job. Same with Audacity vs. Audition, although I've been learning the latter more since they added
kickass features like Remix which works really, really fucking well. Plus it's two clicks away when I'm working in Premiere. Speaking of, there's really no analog out there for Premiere, even among closed source stuff. Apple really screwed the pooch with Final Cut Pro X.