Linux

Funding. Nobody has figured out how to fund development for large open source OSes outside of the enterprise realm. You crack that, you can have linux be installed by default on Desktop/Laptop computers, and patches that come as a result of that funding benefit the rest of the ecosystem as well. People will use the default, they will complain about it, just like they complain about Windows Update randomly restarting their computer, but they'll use it.

But also the share of people who own laptops or desktops continues to dwindle. Many people don't have and see no need for a computer. So they run Android, which is Linux, so I guess we're winning there?

Off the top of my head things that Ive run into over the years that would have caused 99% of computer users to throw Linux in the bin:

*Having to edit xorg.conf to set the graphics driver

*A typo in the sources list that prevented any packages from downloading (distro upgrade)

*A bug in systemd that resulted in the OS not booting (fresh install)

*The wrong graphics card driver being selected and not being installed correctly because Ubuntu kept back 5 packages necessary for it to function (fresh install)

*A bug in how Ubuntu handles the disk platter that causes hard drives to fail far more rapidly than they should (that bug has been there for years and probably ruined a few hard drives)

*Having to recompile the wifi driver after every upgrade (broadcomm chipset) before the driver was included in the kernel and having to reinstall the OS after the driver was included in the kernel because something went wrong during the upgrade. ie recompiling didnt fix anything and the native driver wasnt working either.

*failed drive encryption

*grub being installed incorrectly (no boot)

*dealing with UEFI to maintain a dual boot for programs that cannot be emulated or virtualized effectively (lag sensitive non-native games)

*Audio output defaults being incorrect (no sound, no mic)

But the one thing that above all else, will drive newbies away is how the general linux community tends to respond to things.

I’m an artist who is never switching to linux unless they fix my major gripes (which seem like it’ll never happen just looking at the answers here lol).

Allergic to GUIs

• Devs and most Linux users act allergic to having intuitive GUIs. It’s already a pain to use a lot of small programs that don’t have them on windows. I’m familiar enough with using terminals for stuff but I am so incredibly disinterested in using it All The Time or even often.

Not having easy to access and understand toggles/settings are actually a friction point for most users—I think people who are tech inclined seriously need to remember and understand this. Needing to dig for a command to do simple things IS the OS getting in the way in my experience. I’ve seen screenshots of elementaryOS which seems to get this but my next issue is:

Software and hardware compatibility

• A lot of things I use for work like CSP, Adobe suite, Live2d, etc aren’t natively supported. I also don’t want to be risking encountering possible bugs or errors trying to get it to run them. Not all my games are from steam either, and I don’t know if those would run. There’s simply too many things I use daily that don’t have native support.

I also keep hearing about AMD driver issues which is no good for my pc.

Overall, as much as I hate windows and microsoft, it’s easier to put up and debloat the garbage that comes up over dealing with the issues above. Because when it works, It Actually Just Works. There’s more google-able tech support answers for it too instead of me needing to ask for help every time I encounter something.

Things that are easy to do does add up eventually, which again, is why needing to use the terminal often is not at all an ideal average user experience especially if this could be cut down with some mouse clicks. I think distros could address this if the devs actually care about the non-tech nerd user experience, but I don’t know if the software support/compatibility will ever be fully dealt with.

edited to fix formatting

Honestly I think Linux has been on a great path with flatpak and appimages and graphical software centers. With BTRFS Snapper system recovery if an update goes wrong is even easier than the windows version to be honest. Honestly the big push now just needs to come from some corporate and also adoption at the early education level. One reason its so hard for people to switch from windows is because most windows users have at this point used windows and nothing else for 20+ years.for those of the millennial generation and gen z they've been trained to use windows literally since childhood. Linux and open source tech being free and open source would make it a great cost savings move forpublicc education institutions and getting newer generations of young people not straight indoctrinated into using exclusively windows is important.

But to do this IT departments need to have corporate fallback for support. We need companies like suse enterprise or redhat etc to do the corporate level support to even think about an endeavor like that.

The average user doesn't give a shit about what OS they're running. They also don't know what tools they need. I remember a client who dropped $700 on Photoshop because "How else can I resize my photos?"

Linux is to hard for someone who doesn't know why it's bad to install multiple antivirus suites. People who don't know the difference between a web browser and a search engine.

Linux will only ever be for hobbyist because they the only ones who give a damn.

Exiting Vi/Vim 😂

I mean... Is Linux even a challenge to anyone that just needs basic stuff? (Ubuntu, fedora, etc)

I only have trouble trying to install shit that's not in repos.

Preinstall it on cheap laptops.

It's that ~~simple~~ hard.

Most folks have been sold a story that every new technology they start using is supposed to be "intuitive"; and that if it is not "intuitive" then it must be defective or willfully perverse.

For example, novice programmers often stumble when learning their second or third language, because it differs from their first. Maybe it uses indentation instead of curly braces; maybe type declarations are written in a different order; maybe it doesn't put $ on its variables; maybe capitalization of identifiers is syntactically significant.

And so they declare that Python is not "intuitive" because it doesn't look like C; or Go is not "intuitive" because it doesn't feel like PHP.

It should be obvious that this has nothing to do with intuition, and everything to do with familiarity and comfort-level.

Commercial, consumer-oriented technology has leaned heavily into the "intuitive" illusion. On an iPhone or Windows, Android or Mac, you're supposed to be able to just guess how to do things without ever having to confront unfamiliarity. You might use a search engine to find a how-to document with screenshots — but you're not supposed to have to learn new concepts or anything. That would be hard.

That's not how to learn, though. To learn, you need to get into unfamiliar things, recognize that they are unfamiliar, and then become familiar with them.

Comfort-level is also important. It sucks to be doing experimental risky things on the computer that's storing your only copy of your master's thesis research. If you want to try installing a new OS, it sure helps if you can experiment with it in a way that doesn't put any of your "real work" at risk. That can be on a spare computer, or booting from a USB drive, or just having all your "real work" backed up on Dropbox or Google Drive or somewhere that your experimentation can't possibly break it.