My guess and opinion on the common blockers to Linux adoption
The big one seems to be the inability to buy a mainstream device with a Linux distribution preinstalled. The few options I know of are niche devices or sometimes single models usually marketed as dev devices. It is also near impossible to even find something without any os installed. Even manufacturer like Framework doesn't offer Linux preinstalled laptops or even just fully assembled ones but without os.
Lacking third party software and hardware support. This is a very real problem and something that can make Linux unviable for specific use cases but also something that will never resolve without higher adoption in personal computing, my guess is at tenth of marketshare we would start seeing it being treated as a serious option. It is amazing that something like wine exists and how well it works but it still can't do everything and it is worse than native support. Similarly not many people are willing to even consider VMs or dual booting for specific workflows that need Windows.
Fragmentation of distros and ways to do things but with standard recommended beginner distros this seems to me more of a perception then a clear problem for most use cases for majority users who would theoretically migrate.
A fallacy where people value a thing perceived to be free less also seems to play a role along with public perception of Linux and its users. Slogans such as Linux is only free if you don't value your time which is ironically IMO more true of Windows these days with the cost usually part of the price of the device and not really perceived or considered by the average buyer.
This seems similar to the usual jokes about vegans and other ill formed perceptions. My guess is that it is the result of people plain ignoring things that have potentional to be uncomfortable along with those with niche opinions being more likely to have considered them and to have strong reasons to hold them along with wanting to at least tell people what they are.
I am just plain ignoring Mac here to be more concise and because I have zero experience with them.
It’s a conference of several factors.
As you’ve noted, there’s not all that many computers that ship with Linux, and the handful that do tend to be from boutique vendors or labeled as dev machines. To make things worse these machines aren’t usually the cream of the crop and come with weird quirks and corners cut; the Clevo and TongFang rebadges sold by the likes of system76 and Tuxedo don’t compare favorably to machines like ThinkPads and MacBooks in terms of feel and build quality for example, and real world battery life is disappointing across the board.
On the software side, the FOSS sphere has largely been devoid of UI/UX designers which lends to the platform’s perception as being for nerds and devs due to rough edges, usability oversights, and general lack of polish. This is difficult to fix because the software that designers like to use doesn’t run on Linux natively, and traditionally the community has not treated designers well, often mocking or trivializing their work.
Finally, I think the Linux world is maybe too eager to break things. Even under the most stable distributions, on a long enough timescale things just stop working or misbehave from time to time, and fixing these occurrences is impossible for most folks who aren’t versed in the ways of the terminal. This doesn’t get talked about nearly enough and I’m not sure is ever going to not be a problem given how there’s some major component or another that’s always in flux.
I'm glad for this reason that my industry is very, very slowly trying to break that mold and is getting used to adopting other creative tools. Especially since Adobe and Autofesk has only been getting more obstructive over the years.
But yeah, a lot of professional tooling just doesn't work or barely works on Linux. I have to use Unreal Engine for my professional work and trying to get that running on Linux is a herculean effort. Even if you do get it working, you're gonna clash with teammates for a while too. Most small studios literally can't afford to try all that just to "get off Windows".
On the UI/UX side, I’ve been pleasantly shocked that the videos about hyprland occasionally crossing my feed always look stunning.
I’ve always seen exactly the issues you mention with design being an afterthought at best in the vast majority of the OSS world, and I’m not quite sure how a desktop environment that’s a slightly esoteric, difficult to set up technical niche within an OS that’s already only on a single digit percentage of desktops has managed to so thoroughly buck that trend.
However they’ve done it, it gives me a bit of hope that maybe the generation of fully digital native developers who are starting to hit a proper stride in their careers might have a better intuition for usable and beautiful software, and for why that matters.
To my eye, Hyprland feels like the modern day counterpart of Quartz Extreme (OS X) and Compiz (Linux), trailed a few years by Aero (Windows), all of which featured GPU-accelerated eye candy. I’d consider it part of the growing pushback against the past decade+ of sterile, flat, lifeless UI design.
Aww, I was all excited to try this out but they're using Wayland. At the moment that won't work with my voice to text software.
I can’t put my finger on what it is (I’m emphatically not skilled when it comes to design), but there’s something about the examples I’ve seen that makes me think there’s some meaningful thought going into usability in conjunction with aesthetics there, rather than just the eye candy. But I can also fully accept that maybe I’m just being taken in by something glossy after too many years of that lifeless design language!
You were 100% right.
I've been using KDE for the last year or so, migrating from Mac. I went to help someone set up their new Windows 11 machine and was really surprised by how clunky and old fashioned it looked.
KDE does seem less stable than gnome, but I like it enough that I'll live with having to restart it once in a while because my Firefox tabs maxed out my swap space.
I use Ubuntu currently and used many distributions before. I am still forced to use the terminal sometimes. I appreciate that you took the time to create a high-effort post. But the sentence "You are forced to use the terminal sometimes" alone covers it.
Linux is a decent alternative in our minds because we conveniently forget all the little things we must do from time to time that regular users are either incapable or unwilling to do.
EDIT: There is also the issue of the "hacker mentality". A lot of people in open-source still think they're in the 1990s. Unless you ask a question in a very specific way, they can be extremely rude. That was perhaps fine when you were talking to other "hackers" on Usenet in 1992. Not so much if you're answering NiceGrandma72 who just wanna know how to share pictures of their grandkid.
Let me provide an example I encountered this past week. We're about to launch a new containerized software suite where customers are supposed to provide the Linux VM we'll install to.
One of the developers was giving a training presentation, and it became clear that he was mostly speaking Greek to an audience of support, marketing, and other staff outside the dev team. They've been working with Windows installs for years. The demo examples and documentation were all frighteningly fragile works in progress.
Being mindful of the terror among Linux neophytes who are faced with esoteric commands, during the Q and A, I asked colloquially and jokingly what "flavors" of Linux were supported. It seemed like a legitimate and sensible inquiry, something I'd likely have to justify to customers who've standardized on RHEL/CentOS or Ubuntu LTS...
The dev stopped abruptly, and felt obligated to tell the antique female, "They're called distributions", with noticeable huffiness. Then he proceded to ignore the question.
It only feels like the nine billionth time something like this has occurred. I'm not going to excuse it as occasional bouts of neurodivergent rudeness, because the unkindness and assumed superiority is is so pervasive among the die-hard Linux user caste.
I am personally agnostic - not intimidated by a terminal, not lost among GUI options. I multiboot or run VMs as appropriate. There are good reasons for people to have preferences depending on their needs and capacities. But there are no good reasons for the eternal holy wars, the contempt for fellow humans who just want to get things done with a computer, and the assumption that of course Linux is purer and FOSS alone is sufficient to justify various functional deficiencies.
Obviously, I'm still angry and ranting about a recent personal experience. But if you want to broaden Linux adoption, start by treating the end users with kindness and respect for their curiosity.
100% this. You don't see this behavior with Windows folks. Not that I think there are really Windows fanbois...people with Stockholm Syndrome, maybe.
You don't see it that much with Mac fanbois. If anything, Mac fans are saying how awesome Mac is. They're trying to convince you to use their favored OS, handed down by god himself: Steve Jobs.
But Linux fanbois? Insufferable. It's like they don't want you to use it. They do, but only how they use it. You use that distro? Ha, pleb. Arch Linux is clearly so much better. That's what real users use. And if you can't figure it out, go back to Windows, where you belong!
Which is so odd for an OS and ecosystem that supposedly prides itself on being open and free to use how you want to use it. Well, I want to use it sans command line day-to-day. Nope, not allowed. Straight to jail.
I'm exaggerating, obviously. But it is such a weird community. Some legitimately do want greater adoption. To get people away from the actual awfulness that is Windows these days. Like OP, I assume. But there's a large chunk that seems to revel in their supposed superiority. Guys, it's only an OS. Relax.
My favorite part of that kind of huffiness is that someone truly pedantic can point out that they were getting huffy over correctness while being wrong. Asking what flavors are supported is a legitimate question distinct from which distros are supported. As an example, Kubuntu is a flavor not a distro and in some edge cases (ex. target software works correctly under KDE but not under Gnome) this distinction is important.
Tangentially, even as a native English speaker I was kind of bewildered the first time I heard the term "flavor of Linux". It's so much more wacky than the rest of the vocabulary around Linux.
Frankly, I'm seeing some of that "hacker mentality" in this very thread. And to be sure, not from you! But anyway, the inability to think beyond, "well it's easy for me so I don't see what the problem is." Which is exactly why Linux will always be the OS of tomorrow, tomorrow. Because some people who "control" Linux are that way. Right off the bat, I'm thinking about the man, the myth, the legend himself, Linus Torvalds. And then that rolls downhill.
And maybe that's OK that Linux will never be widely adopted among the masses. Whatever. I don't really care. In the grand scheme of things, there are bigger issues to deal with. But it does seem silly to act like Linux has no issues that's preventing greater adoption. That if the people understood it, took the time to learn it, that they'd love it! Sure, whatever. BRB, I gotta go help my mom save a document in Word, for the Nth time. Man, if only she'd use vim...
Oh I am definitely not a hacker or a programmer! But I am right on the edge of the frontier between advanced users and actuall hackers, programmers, etc. So I kinda understand both sides.
etc.
@wsh talked about the possibiity of a paid and open-source Linux desktop and I honestly think it would be super. Linux with paid support and paid development meant exclusively for home users. It is not an absurd idea to me. As long as it is reasonably priced and with regional pricing (since I am writing from Brazil).
You would not be paying for the software, as it would be open-source, but rather for the infrastructure and support.
I really like that idea in principle, I’m just not sure if the economics could work out…
Is there any software out there with consumer pricing and good support? I can’t think of any mainstream examples, and I have a bit of a suspicion that the amount of support a non-expert user would want is always going to be higher than the amount they’re comfortable paying.
I mean in the business sector that's basically what redhat linux is. They pay developers to develop their distro and provide premium support for a smoothed out experience. But the pricing is rather business oriented. It's in the lower three digits (€/$) per year for the workstation variant. To be fair that's also in the ballpark of what Microsoft charges for their one-time windows licenses (per product iteration, so effectively every few years), but most people don't notice since they usually charge hardware vendors and the cost is simply passed on to the enduser when they buy their decice. What average user seriously compares their hardware's price with and without windows preinstalled and thus notices it can make a three digit difference? So I'm not really sure what an average consumer would be willing to pay for an operating system, given how microsoft obscures their pricing to make windows appear free to the enduser.
That’s actually the exact comparison I was thinking of!
Does Microsoft provide meaningful end user support with consumer versions of Windows? As I understand it they don’t offer anything worthwhile unless you’re a large enterprise customer and/or you’re paying for it directly, but I could be mistaken.
In terms of pricing, as well as the Windows license being obscured from the end user, it’s bundled in at OEM cost rather than retail. It’s hard to get definitive numbers there, obviously the Dells and Lenovos of the world don’t want to tell their competitors what deal they’ve struck with MS, but realistic estimates seem to be anywhere from $15-50/machine. At worst ($50, 3 year lifespan) that’s maybe 10-20x cheaper than RHEL, and it could plausibly be 50-100x cheaper if we’re assuming $15 and a 5 year lifespan.
I think somewhere in the $20/month, $200-300/year range is reasonable to expect for dedicated tech support on the assumption it’s amortised over many users and the majority only need to use an hour or two of support time every few months. That also fits very roughly with the numbers I’ve seen for enterprise support contracts on commercial software and on OSS software. There could well be a market for it, but I think it’d be niche - I can’t see the average user adding a few hundred per year onto the cost of their $700 laptop, especially when they can just stick with what they know and get Windows instead.
This has never been fine, it was gatekeeping. Folks like that drive off anyone who doesn't fit their picture of who belongs.
I don't think that's true. The average user is not ever touching the Windows Registry. But on Ubuntu, if you want to install something, you often have to use the command line. That to me is wild. Clearly Ubuntu wants to be the Linux version of Windows or MacOS. The Linux OS for even the non-technical user. But somehow command line is still needed?
That said, I know Ubuntu, at least, has the App Store or whatever it's called. Which is a step in the right direction (even though I rarely use the analogous Windows Store or Mac Store or whatever they're called).
You don't use the app store because you're used to going out and finding installers for things, not because doing so is some inherently easy or required process. How many non-technical users get bamboozled by fake download buttons for applications, or download extra applications they didn't want because the installer application has extra stuff wrapped up in it?
The Ubuntu app store is a perfectly cromulent no-terminal thing for most use cases.
Not sure about the Ubuntu App Store, but on KDE's 'Discover' it works great... except for when there are edge cases. Any error message? Either straight terminal barf, or just nothing. Sometimes it tells me to go manually unlock dpkg in terminal. Much room for improvement.
The actual average user is opening their browser and maybe the occasional game or spreadsheet on the complicated magic box and very much does not want the hassle of something breaking in a way that would inconvenience them far more than the pervasive low level irritations of modern Windows.
Considering that things can be changed rather than treating it as an immutable black box is already moderately unusual, and all but the most ardent are turning back as soon as they see the block of monospaced text with lots of
HKEYs in it in whatever tutorial they’ve found.And here I am wishing every package on every OS could be installed via the command line from a repository. The UX is excellent once you’re familiar with it.
I’m not sure how comparable the two are. Very few typical users have any reason to do registry edits and just use Windows as it is, while under Linux terminal use is required in some cases to just make the machine perform as expected. The last time I saw registry edits being recommended to non-technical users was back in the XP era and under a handful of circumstances with 7.
That is a much less frequent occurrence.
I don't think terminal usage is actually required for the basic use* on the commonly recommended beginner distros. For some tasks it is simply easier, more convenient and possible to automate but there are are gui utilities for the common usage.
Also what is so hard about terminal aside from perception of it being hard? There is not some magical ability needed to use it. It is not as intuitive to find the actions needed for someone not technically inclined but also no need to do anything complex for that probable use case.
Also why does Windows get a pass? Magical terminal incantations and registry edits are not some unknown occurence.
Mandatory asterisk is setup, not needed usually but especially laptops or proprietary desktops can have problems sometimes.
This weekend I attempted to install Brave browser for my new Mint box. I didn't have the time to understand what I'm typing into the terminal, so when the first they they suggested returned an error I gave up. I might go back to it but I'm anticipating multiple hours of learning that I have go budget for.
There's a software manager? 0v0 very nice thanks friend!
I don't know. I am not talking out of any theory. Users just seem to hate and are unwingly to learn text interfaces. I think it is fair to assume that most people needs and wants graphical interfaces. It is the dominant paradigm. This is based on observation, not some theoretical assumption on my part. Do you truly believe regular users will willingly learn the command line? Well, I don't.
Of course not. However, in my personal opinion, being forced to use the Windows registry is a much less frequent occurrence.
I’m no expert but I believe reticence to learn text-based interfaces (that aren’t just plain human speech) boils down to uncertainty.
If one considers the various ways that electronics can be operated, estimated difficulty tracks roughly with the number of functions that don’t have 1:1 mappings to input. Think of the difference between a cassette walkman and a VHS recorder; the former’s buttons all do just one thing, where with the latter you start to run into things like modifiers where multiple functions can combine to produce different behavior. The potential for unexpected behavior, naturally, was higher. Accordingly, almost nobody in the mid-90s would have issues operating a walkman whereas VCR programming was comparatively intimidating and a sizable chunk of people were avoidant of anything but the most basic functionality (also 1:1 mapped) of those devices.
Command lines sit on the extreme end of this uncertainty spectrum. Without prior knowledge or reading of documentation, there’s no way to know what they’re capable of or might do with any given set of inputs. There’s no immediately obvious logic, no cues, nothing. Just a blinking cursor with the ability to act upon the user’s will. That’s scary.
Regardless of whether terminal use is actually hard, many people don't know how to use it and don't know where to go to learn if they did want to use it. Many people likewise don't know how to use a car unless it's automatic.
I have to agree with this. I switched to Linux about 10 years ago, and then switched my partner and my mom, but insisting that I would no longer be their free tech support unless they used the system I was using.
Both of them were (and my partner still is) unwilling to do something as simple as an update or adding and app to Manjaro--which has a GUI for both-- but on the other hand, both were overwhelmed any problem caused by Windows automatic updates, too...
I have a hard time understanding how an otherwise highly intelligent person can be so resistant to understanding a system that they use daily, how someone would not want to be able to control their experience instead of passively accepting frustrations daily--but that seems to be the choice many make.
A large segment of users just "don't want to deal with it". They don't care about computers and do not want to learn because they are just not interested. There's a reason Youtube took so long to start dealing with adblockers: Few people are using them, even though everyone really should.
But what hammered the point really home to me was the when the Youtuber Tantacrul, who has previously worked at Microsoft and designed the Paint3D UI, mentioned how app usage statistics showed that the Undo button (CTRL+Z) in Paint3D was the most clicked on button in the app. I confirmed this in person when I helped a zoomer friend of mine out with a computer and showed her CTRL+Z. She had gone through all of school with a heavy emphasis on PC usage, including the actual covid pandemic and made it all the way onto university before she meet a computer science person (me) that showed her what CTRL+Z is, you know, the most basic bitch shortcut there is.
Most people just do not care. I could tell my dad all day about how'd actually spend less time at the computer entering in data (a necessary task he hates) if he knew how to properly type. But I don't do that, because it's pointless. There's a reason Windows got so damn popular in the 90s. Graphical interfaces are just what the "dumb" user prefers.
Most geeks have a total blindspot about the fact that if you even are a person who's writing a comment on Tildes or reddit or ycombinator, you are already an incredible power user just by the virtue of writing a comment on those places.
Generally I am advocating that they should care otherwise someone else will be glad to care instead of them. But as we are seeing the main concern they will have is not aligned to the user.
Main point I think is that IMO society actually glorifies computer illiteracy leading a lot of people to this attitude but I don't have any answers.
Let's compare computer literacy to actual literacy:
In actual literacy, you're taught by your parents and then at school, formally, from a young age. It's mandatory. There's an official character set and spelling system; it doesn't change and you only need to learn it once in your lifetime. Learning spellings of new words is a continuous process, but people might misspell obscure words and that's just normal.
For computer literacy, you're on your own. You might be taught the basics informally, but that's it. There's no standard - there's Mac, Windows, Linux, when just looking at the OS. Even if you learn your app, like MSN Messenger and Windows XP, you'll have to relearn once everyone switches to Windows 10 and WhatsApp. Specifically, you'll have to learn on your own time. If you put it off long enough, everyone might just switch to Telegram and then you won't have to figure out WhatsApp. Also, app interfaces are changed by the corporations all the time. Sometimes to improve the UI, sometimes just for rebranding reasons. And some parts are actively intended to be confusing (see: privacy consent form).
If we treated computer literacy like actual literacy - formal education, standardised universal interfaces, not constantly changed - then it wouldn't be a problem. People still wouldn't have "common sense", but that's true of everything. Ask any expert on any particular appliance how to use the tool properly that people don't do, and they'll give you quite the little rant usually.
I think the venerable car analogy is the most apt. The majority of people own and use one, all models are different in ways that are sometimes minor and sometimes huge, there are a few common fundamentals to understand, the trend in recent decades has been towards more complex underlying systems that are more locked down and present far less of that complexity to the user, and the average end user is less competent than most people would like them to be.
Education and standardisation help, but they have to be paired with curiosity and willingness to learn on a fundamental level rather than just memorising steps. I couldn’t bear to use a computer every day without understanding the fundamentals, any more than I’d be willing to go through life not understanding the fundamentals of plumbing, or electrical wiring, or how my fridge or oven works.
[Edit] Typo
The daily frustrations part is bizarre to me, for sure. I've seen multiple users who would rather, and readily do, accept that it takes them 30min to turn on their laptop and open Outlook in the mornings, over me getting them a new computer that's faster, but also has a newer version of Windows. They would rather be super frustrated, waste their time daily, than adapt to something new.
Neither here nor there, but it always reminds of that line in the US Declaration of Independence:
They knew it 249yrs ago how hard is to get people to change over to the next version of Windows! /s
points for the quote!
I find the "too complicated" argument to be silly given my experience helping a ton of non-technical people with computers. Novice users on Windows frequently needed help. Some of those novice users I switched to Linux and they also frequently needed help. As expected, nothing changed.
I suppose there is an argument for power users who think they know more than they do and want to fix their own problems without learning new things but that is not the majority of users.
Sure. Lots of people can learn the command line. But do they want to? And if they did how many would perceive that as enough improvement to justify the effort? Do they have lots of urgent needs that wil be improved by that? Remember, these are not programmers. I am talking about people for whom computers are appliances, not a source of fascination. For them computers are not lego. They're fridges.
Yeah, that was my point; the majority of users aren't power users who want to fix things themselves. It doesn't matter if the fix is a bunch of clicks or commands in a terminal, they aren't interested. To claim that one is harder than the other is a moot point for them.
I can share my experiences. I run Windows (+ WSL2), Mac, and Linux both at home and professionally.
I would opt for a Mac for software engineering / development, Linux for hosting / running a service, and Windows for gaming. Outside of those specific use cases I'd probably default to Mac. For me it has all of the same power as Linux, with far more mainstream software support. Anything I can run on Linux I can pretty easily run on Mac.
I think a significant part of this comes down to price concerns too. If that's at the top of your list Linux is probably a more viable option. You can get Linux running way cheaper than either Mac or Windows.
I still run into weird fiddly little bugs on Linux that I just don't encounter on Mac or Windows. Even if you do encounter them on Mac or Windows you can usually quickly Google to find someone with an identical issue and an easy resolution.
One example, I run a linux distro via VMWare and the scroll wheel on the mouse just behaves super weird on Chrome specifically. It's almost like it's lagging. No issue on anything else with a scroll bar. No issue running Windows via VMWare for the same mouse.
I don't really have any blockers for linux adoption. I'm more of an "all of the above" for OS. If anything I'll probably stop using Windows due to the direction of Windows 11 but continue to use both Mac and Linux. I have a lot of devices.
So a friend of mine, who is very technically skilled, decided he was done with windows and wasn't going from X to 11.
He decided to install Manjaro Linux as being a technical person who'd done an Arch install before, he liked the value prop. It was to eventually be a gaming machine, but he wanted to give it a shot.
After a week of troubleshooting trying to figure out why his Ethernet port wouldn't work, why a kernel update took the machine from booting in seconds to about 12 minutes, why downgrading back to the previous kernal didn't undo that problem, and a whole bunch of other stuff I'm skipping he:
I think a LOT of linux people ignore just how many people wind up down these kind of rabbit holes. Manjaro is FAR harder to use than something like mint/pop, but if you don't know what you're doing, or if you have the wrong hardware so there's no driver support, you're in for a world of hurt and debugging.
So yes, if you can a preconfigured machine that will do what the average user wants (one for standard media and one gaming machine....so likely the upcoming steam machine ), I think there's absolutely a future.
That said, there's 100% a reason that little slogan exists. That's before getting into the simple fact that while windows and mac have made concessions in their design for 30ish years, linux refuses to stop carrying its history. Again you can just mod around it, and that's nice (and why i run nushell), but telling ANY normal user to open something in nano (which a lot of the docs for my mid level use case state) is going to end in a very fast uninstall.
Edit-
Oh and as a reference, my recent topic on my own server setup is using information from aforementioned friend to setup. His advice to get ssh -x working was install putty, but it looked like modern windows terminal "would just work" with ssh, and it did. Days of troubleshooting later I never got ssh -x to work. All sorts of documentation followed, questions asked, and the occasional "lets see what copilot says". I didn't just "try putty" which yeah I should have at some point ,but again this is where I find so much of linux frustrating, because people swear these stories don't exist, and they absolutely do.
Another recent "oh this isn't ready for primetime" was openoffice(or was it libre, either way) where i copied a bunch of cells from a web spreadsheet and pasted it it. Got a flat file importer pop up. I get that that's technically what's going on, but on excel, you just get data in cells. No pop up, no nothing. Average users CANNOT be expected to answers those screens and procedures when there's alternatives out there that do not.
Somewhat related, it doesn't help that in Linux communities there's this notion that there are newbie distros. It implies that you're supposed to start with Mint/PopOS/whatever and then move on to harder distros.
To my mind this never made sense. Being easy to use should be the goal, the less the user has to bring up the terminal the better.
I don't like that mentality either, I try to frame it like getting a new bicycle. Do you want one that's ready to ride now or do you want to build it from a kit? Either option could be good depending on the person.
I could write something similar about Tildes. It's too bland. The UI needs to be more flashy. Not enough user engagement. Simply the fact that you need to get invited means Tildes will never compete with Reddit and the like. I could go on, but you probably get what I'm trying to say. And most Tildereenos will rightfully respond with something like: "But that's the point! We like it like it like that!" Linux (or the FLOSS community on a broader scale) is not trying to compete with Windows. It's doing it's own thing and you can be a part of it or not. Your choice.
In the Linux ecosystem, you are either part of the community or you live on their scraps. If you don't like an app, you can write your own or contribute to an existing app by writing a patch or a feature request. Complaining about your bad customer experience is missing the point because you are not a customer, you are a beneficiary and you contribute nothing.
Let's say you have a hobby, like woodworking or knitting, and let's assume we live in a universe where you can allow other people to make a physical copy of the chairs or sweaters you make. Some guy really hates your arm rests or your necklines. But you made them like that for a reason. Are you going to triple your efforts to accommodate some random guy? Maybe. If they asked nicely and had some interesting ideas. But if they just said "this is why your chairs will never be a match for the products of Super Chair Inc. [...]", you'll probably ignore them. This is your hobby, after all.
I get what you're saying. I'm probably suffering from similar issues as you and millions of others. The issue is not that developers are not aware of your woes. It's way, way more complicated, and someone could write a lot more about that than would be appropriate for a comment.
Nowadays there are practical solutions for developers who want to run Linux while using another OS as well. For Windows, there is Windows Subsystem for Linux. For the Mac, it’s already Unix which often suffices, or you could run Linux in a container using Docker. (There are competing alternatives for doing that I should look into more.) On a Chromebook, there is Linux on ChromeOS (Crostini).
If your main goal is a laptop that runs Linux, buying a Chromebook is probably the easiest way since you don’t need to worry about device drivers.
Also, a practical and inexpensive way to get a separate device running Linux is to buy a Raspberry Pi. Or for a game device, the Steam Deck is very popular. I hear that Framework laptops are decent?
So maybe the question is: what are you hoping for from Linux adoption? In a lot of ways it’s already here. It’s not dominant, but you can get it if you need it.
But I think there’s an ideological component to Linux advocacy that isn’t satisfied by these things, since some of them are insufficiently decoupled from Big Tech.
Docker Desktop changed up licensing semi-recently, and I highly recommend Podman Desktop. While I haven't used it for everything, I've been able to get a VSCode dev container running in it pretty easily.
I guess with VS Code, command line usage suffices, but does podman let you run Linux programs that use graphics easily?
As @donn said, maybe. Another option is to run a container with a VNC server and connect to that. I have a Firefox container that works that way running on my home server.
On macOS nothing really does, you have to use the aging XQuartz and open the relevant network ports yourself.
On Windows Subsystem for Linux an X11 server is included and just works™.
People don't care about computers. They care about what computers do for them. People are taught to use software that discourages them learning about how to use their computers. So they resent having to learn to use different computers. It's that simple.
The fact that Linux has more than a few hundred desktop users says quite a bit about the quality of the defaults, by comparison. Simple analogy: people don't know how their cars work, mostly. But people all around the world delight in the details that make their cars theirs. The bumper stickers, the mirror hangers, the seat covers, the paint colour. And some people ride motorcycles! They're much more dangerous, but provide an entirely different mode of driving, and similar latitudes of self-expression on top of that. You can also drive a moped/scooter, or a sport car, or a van, or a truck, or one of those inverted tricycles. They all have different interfaces and limitations and subjective feelings associated with driving them.
Windows is like an oversized SUV with a speed governor, steering limiters to prevent rolling, and a set of harnesses that requires immense effort to sit in comfortably, in a world where it's the only form of personal vehicle aside from one with automatically adjusting harnesses and a smaller chassis (Macintosh).
People are tired of having their crotches pinched and getting their car to turn properly already, thank you very much, why would they want to have to get used to a new set of demands? Sure, the three point seatbelt and the wide array of design options seems nice, but Verne over there said he pinched the webbing of his hand in the buckle anyway, and it's just...unfamiliar. Easier to just deal with the mandatory ad viewing before shifting into drive than to learn a whole new thing just to get to work.
For me it was market capture. I must drive the pinchy .NET SUV to work, and my grandma's condo parkade only allows SUVs, and my super out of date government requires me to use their drive thru with the SUVs.
With the advent of browsers defining much of the computing experience, and with folks becoming used to mobile devices that aren't windows (eg largely android or Apple), and games becoming quite a lot more common on Linux systems, plus Windows 11 finally just sucking that much more, I'm sure there are others like me who are dipping our toes into the unknown this year.
I cared plenty, I just never had the comfort space and leisure time to give it a go before.
Definitely. I'm just trying to take it deeper into the "why did the market allow such obvious capture?", so I'm far from saying "people are too lazy to care", closer to "people are too busy to care enough, and the abusive relationship with proprietary software exacerbates the cost to do so".
Around '07, after the travesty that was Vista, Dell and Acer both tried to offer competition to Windows in the form of Linux distros preinstalled, for a discount. Those programs failed, because they were sold as a drop-in replacement that only needed some manual-reading, and when people realized Windows software didn't work, they got mad at the manufacturers. Less than ten years later, Google releases Chromebooks, across the board less practical for most usecases, but they're sold as "do everything in Chrome. Like you already do", and they're still doing well today.
I bring that up because 2007 seems like around the point of no return, for Windows' market capture. If Dell or Acer had sold their Linux offerings as something other than a way to liquidate underpowered hardware, and instead as "this is for your grandma or child, so they won't get viruses or play those scary Calls of Duty", we might have seen those third party vendors begin to target the platform. Instead, we still have Windows for Professionals, Macs for Artists, and added ChromeOS is for Students.
So, I'm a software engineer who uses a terminal (macOS/Linux), has sysadmined a Linux cluster, and hell, I'll throw in the fact I'm a Vimmer. In short, a lot of things that ordinarily would drive me towards adopting Linux for the desktop & advocating it for others. But, frankly, you'll pry Windows out of my cold dead hands, for a couple of reasons.
Windows is /relatively/ simple for me. I install it (after finding the right incantation to get local login), run ShutUp10!, and then use winget to get all my apps. Once I've done that, it just works. I know I could get Linux to a very similar state, but I'm not interested.
As for what I suggest to others, I would much rather recommend ChromeOS Flex to people instead of a Linux distribution. Mostly because I will never have to give them tech support again.
There's one very simple reason why everyone uses Windows: everyone uses Windows.
Windows has social cachet. If someone has problems with Windows, they feel as if they can just ask their friends and coworkers. Windows is also "free"; there's zero friction to choose to keep running Windows, and whatever downsides there may be are 99% of the time going to be less than the downsides that they'll have to deal with to switch to even the smoothest, easiest alternative. The social aspect is the issue that almost all of the other issues come from, most notably "my game / application doesn't work on that system".
People here have an innate love of computers; they know how to use their operating system because they care. Most people either do not care, or they actively hate that they have to use them. For the latter, it doesn't really matter if you tell them that they don't have to put up with $antifeature if they switch to $alt_os because the switch is just going to put the things they hate about computers right in the forefront. For the majority of people, Windows is just "The enemy they know".
The past year has had the channel Linus Tech Tips doing a lot of "swap challenges" where users were forced to switch to different computing platforms than they're used to across desktop, laptops, and phones. In some cases, people actually did switch. But I think it's important to realize that of those people who did switch, they came from a small pool of people who were even willing to try in the first place.
i dunno... i give you two cents on the topic. Brace yourself, it's going to look a lot like a "old man yells at clouds" rant.
Recently i have decided that i wanted a new laptop. Actually i decided i wanted a laptop - full stop - because the only one i have is literally broken and unusable considering it's just too old to run anything beyond windows xp.
So I started to look for a new machine and i decided i wanted to use linux because i kind of hate windows 11. I have it on my desktop that i use as a gaming console (i turn it on, fire steam... and that is it) and despite this fact i feel i'm not in control. Every now and then i have to go to the settings and turn off (again) some parameters or it just breaks something with its updates (recently Steam stopped to be be launched as soon as the machine is turn on and now i have to wait 1 minute... and i have not idea how to fix it, maybe i will have to just reinstall the os...). So I thought... let's use linux...
...after all my needs are basic. I need something to surf the internet, be able to watch videos, listen to the music, use a word processor. Really basic stuff. I didn't need anything super powerful either because i didn't plan to play anything on that. And i do not use special programs.
And because of this i wanted this laptop to be cheap.
So I started to look on Amazon, Ebay, the local electronics shops and i have made a bit of research to see if i were lucky enough to find a laptop with linux pre installed... because i thought that it would have been better than installing it myself. The idea was that if someone "professional" chose a particular distro for that machines... maybe it was because it was 100% compatible? I also thought that maybe it would have been cheaper because you don't pay for the windows license.
Dunno... I am naive, i know.
The result are depressing at least. I would say that 100% of the laptops out there are windows machines or chromebooks. And are expensive as hell for what they offer (most of them "cheap ones" at least).
I would say that the laptops can be sorted in two groups... on a side you have machines that are good enough to run tests at NASA and CERN, with GPU so powerful that probably the town lights flicker when you plug them into the electric socket. On the other side you have garbage you are lucky enough if they are able to run firefox with a couple of tabs opened.
I eventually decided that nothing suited me, so I have bought a refurbished laptop on ebay, a model I was uhm.... mostly confident was compatible with linux, at least the main distros.
It was shipped with a windows 11 on it, because... naturally :)
First thing i did was to make a clean install of Fedora 42.
I don't open the terminal for anything, install what i need from the software store, update the machine from there too... install some eye candies for Gnome and uhm... this is is. I'm writing you with that. I'm pretty happy with what i have and i'm pretty sure most of the people out there with basic needs like mine wouldn't care their laptop has linux, windows or potatoOS as long as it works, it's fast and it doesn't break.
But my story has a twist... I can look for infos out there, i can decided i want linux, look for the different distros and pick the one i like the most without being mentally freezed by the choice (and the problem with linux is that are simply too many choices)... and install it because i know how to create a bootable usb, boot the pc from the usb and press 10 times the continue button during the installation process.
Most of the people with needs similar to mine just want to click the order button on the online shopand they're perfectly happy with anything that is shipped to them.
They - i guess - would buy a linux computer but... it's simply not out there for them. Not at a fair price anyway. They can discover (maybe) some vendor but i don't know why linux pc / laptops are sold as they are "special". They focus on upgradability, materials, compatibility, power, etc... all good stuff but at the end of the day this means the target of the possible customers is a niche of people that would have been able (as me) to install linux... but they chose to buy a pre-installed machine because it looked way cooler.
The majority of people don't even know system76 is out there and even if they knew why should they choose this vendor instead of lenovo, hp, etc... for them it sounds strange more or less like the unknown brands on Ali express.
So... long story short. For linux to be vastly adopted we need a vendor (a big one) with a line of cheap, reliable laptops / pc that are sold to normal people with basic needs. After a while programs will come to them too because there is enough critical mass to pull the interest of the software houses.
To me, it's the continued insistence on using command line. A lot of people in the Windows and Mac worlds can't even use the GUI properly. Yet, Linux distros, even more user-friendly, GUI-based ones like Ubuntu (which is what I tend to default to), still require a surprising amount of command line use. I certainly use the command line in Windows and MacOS, but that's only when I'm trying to do more "under the hood" things. Day to day, I don't have to touch a command line at home. Some days, even at work.
For example, installing software. Which I think is a fairly normal thing to do on a computer. Often or always I still have to use command line in Ubuntu just to install something. I'm getting more exposure to Linux, more exposure to working in command line, even pure CLI environments, mainly through work, but it's also bleeding over into home/homelab use on my Linux machines. But I still find it annoying. Why can't I just download an installer from a website and after a few clicks, have it installed?
Do you think that navigating to a website, downloading an installer, and executing it is less effort than
apt install softwarenameorpacman -Sy softwarename? It's a different process, but I find the act of going out to find installer applications kind of tedious.If you want the "download a thing from the web and double click it" experience, there are always appimages which are very very common.
As someone technical, I tend to prefer installing via the command line, but I’m familiar with it and know that it’s not going to blow anything up if I make a typo.
Meanwhile for most people, telling them to open their terminal is about like telling them to open the hood of their car. It’s unfamiliar and intimidating and the risk of catastrophe is overestimated greatly.
Downloading and double clicking installers is a bit tedious maybe, but it’s entirely familiar and users are reasonably confident that they’re not going to unintentionally explode something while doing it.
Only because they've been trained to do so. It's not some inherently safer process.
Perception vs. reality.
And it’s more than just training. Even the most abstract GUIs are somewhat relatable to prior experience in the physical world, and so they’re easier for people to conceptualize. Command lines have no analogue and may as well be code-speaking genies stuck in typewriters.
It may not be safer but command line prompts are literally a foreign language. If you don't know it, you are sol.
It's never been easier to learn these kinds of things.
I agree but some people don't make the effort to learn any language that is not what they learned growing up.
For me, the only impediment to switching full time to Linux is software lock-in. Microsoft knows where to exercise its monopoly powers: the workplace. In every job I've worked, there is at least one mission-critical piece of proprietary Windows-only software that I must use, either with my own employer or with a client. That makes full-time Linux (or even Mac) use a nonstarter. Which is a shame, because I would love to throw a Linux distro on my PC that I built at home, and never look back.
When you boil it down, the main reason is simply that there's not enough reasons to use linux as a desktop OS. Linux has been gaining steam (pun intended) in one area of personal computing: the niche of portable gaming devices.
Starting with the steamdeck and continuing with many more of steamdeck-likes either including steamos or being compatible with ChimeraOS, bazzite, etc. There, there are real pros - a major one is suspend, which just doesn't work on windows. Another is performance - with such small sizes, squeezing every bit of performance is worthwhile.
For your average desktop user, there's not much gain, and quite a lot of friction. So people don't do it. And there probably won't be a reason - more and more, the browser is becoming the omni-OS, so the base OS matters less and less.
My work machine run Arch on WSL2. I'm happy now that I can simply pretend that I work in a Linux environment and I don't have to administrate Windows too much past winget.
Nowadays I don't recommend people to run Linux desktop. Back when Compiz & Kiba Dock was a thing, people thought Linux interface was ahead of Windows, but I believe Microsoft didn't actually try. With Windows 7 and later I feel like they actually gave it a try and it surpassed Linux in many areas (while adding antifeatures in the process). Personally I run MATE - I feel like GNOME 2 was the best Linux experience I had, and MATE felt exactly like that, which also means it haven't improved much in the past decade.
I tried donating to MATE Patreon, which I think the entire amount I paid is more than a Windows license, but it doesn't feel like it mattered. Fractional HiDPI doesn't work, Xorg use the lowest refresh rate across monitors, Qt apps use white font on white UI because it didn't care that my GTK is dark themed, WebP/AVIF images not previewing. At this point I gave up - if there's a Linux desktop suite that is paid, yet freedom friendly and be as good as other commercial competitors I might have paid. I suppose that is what stopping people from Linux too - they don't have problem paying for Windows or Apple tax, why use an inferior operating system to cheap on cost and waste their time.
I think a lot of people who aren't IT-minded don't look at it this way. They're buying a Windows laptop or desktop, MacBook, or perhaps Chromebook, and don't separate the hardware from the OS. If you haven't built your own PC or worked in IT in an enterprise that has to manage licensing, you're probably unaware of what a Windows license even costs.
I'm low key fine with a Linux-based system having the characteristics of the Hole Hawg of operating systems (hilarious read on the power and danger of Unix and the arrogance of its proponents). Adoption only seems relevant to me insofar that it sustains maintenance and development of the software I use and turns enough vendors onto the fact that there's enough money to make supporting it that I can easily buy or build a computer that'll run it and have a job writing software with and for it, which seems to be the case for now.
What I see as its main practical benefits as a day-to-day operating system over other options doesn't apply to my uncle or my mother. It's largely in software built by power users and enthusiasts for power users and enthusiasts. High configurability, simple ad-hoc IPC via text streams, workflow automation by the same means you use it interactively, high degree of respect and trust for the user. When the trend for a lot of commercial software is to identify and streamline some highly marketable subset of potential workflows at the expense of any other use case, a typical Linux distro software repository or even just a given single GNU tool is a kitchen sink of options tacked on over time by contributors with different ideas of what the software could be used for.
To most people, that would probably lean more towards being a weakness because considered as a design, it's unprincipled and lacks coherence, resulting in software that sometimes defies intuition and discovery by experimentation, something which Windows or moreso OS X are cleverly designed to facilitate.
I'm sure you could build an elegant, coherent desktop operating system on top of a GNU and Linux core, as Next and Apple proved you can do with a Unix-like. There are already some promising projects which I think are getting closer to that end by building their own software suites according to shared sets of design principles and methodologies. Hopefully more people will eventually find it useful enough for their own purposes because of that, but I say that for their sake, because I'm just not very interested in it myself.
I have too many hobbies already and Linux is a hobby unto itself.
It's because linux is made by geeks for other geeks. And what geeks want from their OS is not just different, it's fundamentally opposed to what works for regular people.
You'd think having different distros would solve the issue - you can have distros for geeks and distros for the masses. But the problems is that geeks are so full of themselves, they refuse to make distro for the masses for ideological reasons. So you end up with geek distros and geek-lite distros. And while those might look very different to the power user, it's pretty much the same for the noob.
If you want successful linux you need to do stuff like:
Significantly limit what the user can do. The user should not be allowed to control their own computer.
Dumb everything down. There should be very few options to customize or change anything. Hide/make inaccessible any system files.
Completely remove/hide the console. Deliberately make it impossible to control programs from a console.
One big corporation should be the gatekeeper that gets to decide what's allowed and not allowed, and they should profit massively from it.
FOSS should be strongly distinctivized. All programs should be paid. What's free should have shittons of ads and tracking.
With each new version restrict more and more. If geeks are complaining about "enshittification", you are doing it right.
Of course that's not gonna happen. I bet just reading this has made a bunch of geeks furious. Geeks have ideological beliefs on how computers should be, and if you don't like it, you can take the highway. Which is what people end up doing.
Actually, we do have a linux OS that's popular with the masses. It's called Android. And surprise surprise, it did exactly the things I described.
You can look at Apple for a similar approach. And Windows obviously has been on that road for a long time too
I don’t really think any of those list items are necessary. Windows and macOS aren’t really all that restricted, and what few protections exist can be turned off entirely so you can blow your install up just as badly as one might with a typical Linux distro.
The difference is that with both it’s rare that users are required to reach for advanced functionality. It exists but uncle Jim checking his email doesn’t have a clue it’s there because he never needs it.
The Linux world would rather Jim learn how to administer his Linux box than just be able to use it without that knowledge. While I admire the spirit (probably falls under “hacker spirit”) and agree that would be a good thing, it’s not particularly realistic, because all Jim wants is to be able to check his email. Having to figure out why the last kernel update ate his wifi drivers (or even what a kernel is in the first place) and fix them is an unwelcome distraction.
That is a rather bleak and overly tragic take.
#1 is false. You can still allow the user to control their OS, you just have to make this completely unnecessary for regular users.
#2 sure, and that is what GNOME does. You say it like it's a terrible thing but I would simply call that "making the OS friendlier". You can have a toggle from "advanced mode" in configurations (like KDE Plasma does), and essential files are already protected by being owned by
root. In fact, System files on Linux are better protected than on Windows.#3 goes a little overboard. You don't have to remove or hide the terminal, just make it completely unnecessary for regular users.
#4 is perhaps true. But an extremely popular FOSS project could do it as well.
#5 is completely false. There is plenty of FOSS on Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. This is not a real issue.
#6 is just #1 phrased differently.