Linux

Linux has only become much more user friendly in about the past 5 years. Installing Linux Mint in my experience was actually easier than Windows. It comes down to education and the misconception that using Linux is somehow more difficult than Windows or iOS. The hard truth is if someone is using Windows or iOS they are probably just too lazy to switch as long as it does what they need they don't care if they're being burdened with bloatware or spied on.

There needs to a single “App Store” where regular people can find free and paid apps that will work on all distros.

Basically, we need Steam for non-gamers.

They need to be able to buy accessory products that do more harm than good. It’s can’t be a proper alternative to windows without CCleaner support!

I think it is its image of lack of stability and features; I know there are out there stable distros and almost every well known program has a Linux version, but the image that Linux has had through the years is not that. If Linux overcomes this and gets a better reputation, it would be a great weight lifted for the road ahead of the OS. I hope Proton breaks through the mainstream public and Linux gets more exposed and known out there

There's quite a lot needed from peripheral manufacturers, regarding drivers and utilities. You still can't, for example, just buy any new printer or scanner - you have to check compatibility first.

I think the gap between what the average Linux user thinks is ease of use and what the average non Linux user thinks is ease of use is probably much larger and many devs seem to understand.

I think it would be beneficial to have a completely idiot proof installer that doesn't ask you about partitions or formatting or basically anything just point it towards a drive and it will set up a default installation.

More GUI based means of doing basic stuff. A casual who wants to access some photos from his laptop does not want to figure out how to manually configure samba shares by editing config files in their terminal based text editor.

I think codecs are a much bigger pain in the ass than is ideal. As I understand that there are legal reasons for this but the first time some casual goes to play a video and gets an error message their first thought may not be "let me search Google and figure out what this error message means" their first thought maybe "Linux sucks and can't play videos".

The permission structure that makes Linux so secure makes it a little annoying for casuals. For example, you actively and intentionally go to the default software store, navigate to the updates tab, update a package you've already installed and clearly want, and do so from the official OS repository... This requires that you enter your password to protect you from what exactly? It's not a big deal it takes one second to type my password, but how would you explain this to a casual in a way that makes sense? Your OS is protecting you from potentially rogue acts of official patches to your default text editor.

I think the folder structures are pretty big challenge for converts. On Windows you can find most of the files associated with any given program in your program files folder. On Mac there's an applications folder. On Linux... it's somewhere, don't worry about it. That's not really a fixable one it just is what it is.

Workplace is a huge conveyor of technology, and capitalism loves capitalism. Public sector has a much higher Linux adoption rate

As my employer has turned to almost exclusive webcrap over software - I see no hurdles really. Webapps run shitty either way. Fucking Salesforce and Opus bullshit... refresh.. refresh...

Native Adobe apps ports :(

GLIBC

A universeal and thought out accessibility system. Best with kernel support.

I think the big problem is no Ubuntu circa 2010 distro anymore that "just works" ala netbooks of the era. Only Fedora has Ubuntu in 2010-level hardware support for actual modern hardware, but no Broadcom wifi sans internet and you will need to google for and execute like 40 lines of random cli commands that seem to add the same 3 codecs 14 ways apiece to make HEVC work (more for VLC HEVC ironically). Ubuntu does Broadcom wifi out of the box, but has gotten bad and has poor hardware support overall for new hardware. Mint has the best printer support, but as of 22.1 no longer does Broadcom wifi out of the box... SteamOS is actually really great -- and has MARKEDLY better hardware support for dongles and such than Bazzite, no comparison, and Bazzite suffers from Fedora's shit HEVC situation PLUS immutable distro BS where it DOES use system .so's but is in denial -- but isn't a real distro...

Games are still not perfect. Multiple screens can be really finicky if they have different resolutions and refresh rates.

For the vast majority of users Linux is just a worse deal. Only thing that really comes to mind that Linux does that users care about is that it will support that hardware that Windows 11 will leave behind, and even those users will happily just run Windows 10 without updates and if that bites them in the ass then maybe they’ll upgrade or just ask their IT friend to use a bypass to make Windows 11 at least work on their old hardware.

Otherwise, of the things users actually care about, Linux has worse app support to the point that even pro-Linux users would rather dual-boot that lose access to their games and worse hardware support. Linux also has a problem of not being well understood by a lot of tech folk so if you bring somebody onboard you better be ready to be their only point of support.

ChromeOS is probably the best example against this since it is basically just a browser, the laptops it sells on are substantially better value than their budget counterparts and realistically a lot of the people buying them are parents for their kids so the user’s preference is substantially pushed aside in favour of cost. The SteamDeck is another good counter-example since it essentially refuses to compete with the PC gaming market by calling itself a handheld.

Linux is stuck in the crappy position of needing more users to get more software and hardware support but users need better software and hardware support for Linux to make sense compared to Windows. It’s getting better and Valve’s efforts have steadily brought the Linux gaming percentage up but it’s still the enthusiast OS.

By all means encourage it’s usage though. Linux is a far more open and privacy-respecting option and the more tech folk and basic-usage users that adopt it the better!

I'm still seeing YouTube comments about having to use the terminal for everything. I mainly use it for btop