This is a good analogy. For more context in the past 5 years working with customers in the Bay Area I’ve not encountered one who mentioned linkerd let alone ran it in production.
More than half those companies ran istio in production at large scales.
Maybe you're just not talking to the right companies. There are a ton of Linkerd adopters and the list is constantly growing! https://linkerd.io/community/adopters/
More than half those companies ran istio in production at large scales.