this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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It’s not because it’s not used by the common public, it’s because there aren’t normie-friendly resources and or a company help desk that average people rely on when they need assistance. It’s all well and good for people to say these things are easy to learn and they don’t break, it in the real world, for people who don’t really care about this stuff but have to use it for a few random tasks, it’s nice to know there’s a place that will help you. Not everyone has a techie friend or relative.
The issue is not with the software itself (although there are issues there) as much as it is with non-commercial nature of Linux. It’s great that there’s a thriving community of people who are passionate about this stuff and get great use and enjoyment out of it, but many of the reasons people love it are also reasons why it will probably never be a viable mainstream option.
And why there aren't normie-friendly resources and or a company help desk? :)
Because it’s hard to support employees and compete with corporate behemoths like Microsoft and Apple when your product is a free, open-source OS?
Personally I haven't heard of anyone getting support from Microsoft or finding Microsoft help pages useful. MacOS and Windows are making money on the support for corporate users and for manufacturers preinstalling the system (Apple being it for themselfs). Nothing that Linux cannot also do.
We are talking about going mainstream, then do you think that if Linux would have ~80% of the desktop market, there won't be any commercial support companies and normie level help? There certanly is for the server space, even home servers like NAS devices.
I don’t get the point of playing what if.
If Linux somehow grew its market share to 80% of all users then there probably would be some form of support-based business or companies forking off their own version and building their own supported platforms, and the we end up with a bunch of closed platforms competing for all the money by offering a more polished experience for a premium.
Or none of that happens. I don’t know, this is all just make-believe because it’s a scenario that’s never going to happen.