this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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I've literally heard for 15-20 years now that "This is the year of linux! It's so much easier and better than windows!"
My response has been that if Linux ever had an interface that's intuitive, and non-techies can take to instantly, Linux would actually grow. Their reply each time is that "Linux is getting more popular by the day!". And that's true. However, it's a bit misleading. About a year ago I read that Linux was at the highest usage it's ever had, at roughly 5% of the market.
Think about that. Linux has been around in some form since 1991, and it's always been free (with a few exceptions). A free platform can't compete against Apple, who's notorious for being ungodly expensive, and Windows, who's known for being costly in it's own right, and also terribly optimized. Still running certain code in the background since windows 95. Yet Linux, as of a year ago cracked an all time high of 5%. Which may as well be a rounding error.
The ONLY reason I use linux as my daily driver, is because my other daily driver, which I haven't booted in a few months, is Windows 7. And I'm not even worried about the security issues. It's just gotten sluggish, and less and less things work on it over time. It's easier to just use linux, as I mostly just use it as a means to open a browser anyways. My desktop looks more like Windows XP than linux. It just doesn't act like Windows XP.
That's what we need. A Linux distro that functions exactly like a modern day Windows XP. I think Windows XP couldn't handle hard drives with more than 4TB. So, obviously that's something a modern OS would fix. But the idea of just clicking .exe files, and installing them like on windows? That works for me. All the stuff Linux users hate about windows? If it were optimized and modernized, I'd take that over traditional Linux experiences.
But I will never use Windows 10 or especially 11. Fuck that.
You've clearly never supported users on windows and macos when they weren't already familiar with it or you'd never imply that windows and macos had intuitive interfaces that nontechies could take to instantly. None of them do but for a long time the default interface people were introduced to and taught to use was primarily windows unless they were doing art or media when they got introduced to macos instead.
You're making the mistake in assuming that what's popular must be the best/easiest. That's definitely not true. People don't pick Windows because it's easier to use than other OSes. They pick it because that's what they're used to. It takes a lot of inertia to get over what people are comfortable with and get them to use something different.
You are looking at this the wrong way. Nobody needs to compete with Windows and Mac, particularly volunteers do not want to be free support for people too lazy to learn the slightest thing for themselves and asking all the questions already covered prominently in the documentation again and again. Why would anyone optimize to get those people to Linux in their projects?