Note my comment was "Linux on the Desktop", not "Linux on Embedded".

It's quite obvious that not all software is for one platform or another. It's just the vast majority of Desktop software happens to be Windows. And if that's what you're writing, targeting Win32 gets you Linux on the Desktop as well as Windows. There's no reason to write a Linux-native version and have to deal with all of the incompatibilities across distros, let alone compatibility issues over time.