Linux

• Needs to come pre-installed on computers.
• Pre-installed distro needs to support one-click installation (like .app or .exe).
• Pre-installed distro needs to have be easily searchable (for problems, and e.g. searching "chrome DISTRO_NAME" needs to pop up with a link to the one-click installer).
• Pre-installed distro needs to run perfectly out-of-the-box, no fiddling with drivers, no needing to issue a random shell command for some random issue.
• UI needs to be intuitive. Probably something like KDE. Could maybe do Elementary or GNOME with dash-to-dock or something.
• Updates should be easy. Ideally apps can self-update or the apps will indicate if they need an update and have a button opening up an updater that can update all your apps/the OS.
• Updates for minor programs need to be hidden/rolled into OS updates. Most people aren't gonna want to see that glibc updated.
• Better management of stuff like VPNs (probably not important for the average user, but e.g. NetworkManager's GUI support is kinda shit).
• If using GNOME, need to have app indicator stuff pre-installed (if I'm being honest, the fact it's not built-in is absurd).
• Needs to come with good basic apps. Some of the default apps included with DEs are kinda shit. There is still no truly good mail client IMO (at least that doesn't look dated AF).

Probably more.

EDIT: Something like Lutris should probably be integrated into the OS. Installing non-Steam games is a minor hassle at the moment IMO.

For non-enterprise users only two things:

1. Zero reasonably priced options for support when things go wrong.
2. Breaking changes caused by updates that make that support necessary.

If my neighbor's Windows or Apple machine breaks they can call Microsoft or Apple, the PC manufacturer or a bunch of different support providers. Microsoft provides free support if one of their updates causes problems.

I can't find any Linux support aimed at home users, only very expensive enterprise support options.

Some small but important taken-for-granted things functioning like screen and audio sharing/recording in wayland. Yes, I know sometimes with some apps/distros it works. But it needs to work all the time on all reasonably current hardware everywhere. Wayland is getting there, but we're still a ways off and X11 has its own issues. It feels like we're 80% of the way there for feature parity and stability vs Windows and MacOS, but this last 20% stretch is feeling like an eternity. The bugginess and lack of features stretches to multi-monitor support as well. Plus we've got a bunch of distros threatening off and on to remove 32bit libraries, which would really hamper software support that's already anemic to begin with... There's no one single blockbuster issue. It's just little everyday things that produce just enough friction to keep the unwashed masses away.

offer less choice and have an official version of things.

I guess it would be reducing the need of terminal usage as much as possible. That's still the only thing a common user struggles with, in my opinion. The rest is just difference or has nothing to do with Linux.

With Linux gaming is rising currently, most common problem is kernel anti-cheat games and it's not Linux problem, for example. What are devs supposed to do? To develop literal Windows kernel compatibility layer or something? But Linux may do stuff on their end to make cheating difficult to keep game studio's happy but that would also mean to stray away from its philosophy. As a general platform, it would be hard to do this anyway. This would be possible per distro basis. Maybe Linux dev circles are already discussing this, maybe not, I don't know honestly.

Reliance on terminal

I think it's more users need to realize that an OS that is easier to use in every way is not a more difficult OS to use.

But also, I'm okay gatekeeping Linux, as bringing the masses over just means enshitification and turning it into Windows again. Fuck that.

Te community lmao

I'm reminded of a video I saw of a woman talking about her dating prospects using M&Ms. She poured a bunch on the table as a metaphor for her dating pool, and slid away M&Ms as she ruled the people they represent out. "8 million people in the city. But half are women slides half of the M&Ms away of the remaining 4 million men, 20% are under 25, slides more M&Ms away" until she got to a point where she had one candy left, and then she shattered it with a meat tenderizer and continued sliding pieces of it away.

You can do that for potential adoptees of Linux, because there are a bunch of filters in series you have to pass through before successfully adopting Linux.

8 billion people on the planet.

Subtract the Sentinelese and Amish and North Koreans and everyone else who just outright doesn't have access to computers. Nothing we can really do about them and in some cases it would be unethical to try.

Now subtract out the people who only use a mobile device like a cell phone or tablet, which are locked to their OSes. Android or iOS is as much a part of the hardware as a microwave oven's firmware is to them. Linux on mobile devices (excluding Android) is in a severely rough state, there's basically no hardware and software combo that is ready for daily driving.

Now subtract out the people who do use a PC or other device, that won't ever install an operating system on a computer themselves. You'll get some of these folks by selling computers with Linux installed in stores and such, though I think you'll have to address a few other points later. I think SteamOS is demonstrating this.

Now subtract the people who might install Linux themselves, say PC builders who would have to install an OS anyway, but bounce off the process of choosing a distro and then installing. The big distributors like Canonical and Fedora tend toward marketing wankshit instead of human language. You can't tell their goddamn websites "I just want the normal end-user desktop version with KDE please." Does "Core" mean our main, central product, or the IoT embedded system version? You kind of have to know Fedora calls their Gnome edition "Workstation" and if you want "normal Fedora but with KDE" that's a "Spin." Then you get the Trendy Fork Of The Month, things like Bazzite and Nobara that pretty much are Fedora or Ubuntu with a theme applied, maybe some actual features in the OS, but often just a redone onboarding process, like I think it's Bazzite that offers a configurator on their website that lets you pick your desktop and such. Defuckulating the onboarding process of major distros might allow us to do away with the Trendy Fork Of The Month.

Now subtract the folks who get a Linux machine up and running and then bounce off of the unfamiliar UI. I'm pretty sure this is Gnome's fault more often than not, Gnome is deliberately hostile to both distro maintainers and end users to the point there are now four DEs that are "We can't do this anymore" forks of Gnome: MATE, Cinnamon, Unity and Cosmic. You'd probably see more people stick with Linux if it was less easy to stumble dick first into Gnome.

Now subtract the people who got this far and then said "My CAD/art/music/office/finance/whatever software doesn't run on this." and had to switch back. In a lot of cases, software like that exists in the FOSS ecosystem but it's significantly inferior, like FreeCAD or GIMP. These are often kept in a deliberately shitty state because some opinionated programmer likes how the code they wrote in 2004 looks in their IDE, so open software continues to be unadoptable and people continue to pay subscriptions to the Captain Planet villains in charge of Microsoft, Apple, Google and Adobe.