Linux

The main issue is that easy problems that should be solved baseline by the OS crop up far too often for the average user to want to have to deal with day to day. Also, whenever you go to ask on a forum, you're usually told to just do something entirely different or use another distro. Every time I go to fix something on this machine it sends me down a rabbit hole of shit I don't care about because it doesn't solve my problem since it introduces a brand new one to solve. If I want to use solution X don't tell me to go install program Y that's your favorite program to use but is literally not what I'm trying to accomplish.

Today I installed Manjaro onto an old laptop and for the life of me I could not figure out why it wasn't connecting to the internet. It wasn't a network issue, it was the fact that the time was out of sync. It took me a while to realize that was the issue and not that I had fucked up my router config or something. It just couldn't validate any cryptography because the time was off. There were like four different solutions that all attempted the same fix and eventually I was able to connect with ethernet and restart timesync, which only worked after a restart.

Many comments here largely underestimate an average non linux user.

I mean... Is Linux even a challenge to anyone that just needs basic stuff? (Ubuntu, fedora, etc)

I only have trouble trying to install shit that's not in repos.

Lack of backwards compatibility for older versions of software/games requiring older libs. All I see it lots of pointing back and forwards but it doesn't get solved.

Lack of legacy drivers for graphics cards. I want to run a new distribution on my old hardware, using graphics acceleration and no screen-tearing. Is that too much to ask?

If a program is executed through a wm, have it submit errors to the wm as well so I can see why it's not running, instead of seeing a loading cursor for 2 seconds and then nothing.

I want to be able to do 99-100% of what I want to do using a GUI. Even installing drivers and changing settings. I don't want to have to change things in a text editor just so I can have a simple shortcut on the desktop. I've learned how to do it and I can do it in my dreams now, but that doesn't mean I like doing it.

Ok, so I have an ASUS Zephyrus M16 with a Core i19 12th Gen and an rtx 3070. I was able to install fedora and able to get it mostly 100% working, but my two biggest issues where I could not play Destiny 2 (because they didn't want to support Linux and actually would ban players who tried), and the switch between egpu and the discrete gpu that you have to reboot for the changes to take effect. Every once in a while the display wouldn't work and I had to reboot multiple times before it would start to work again because of the aforementioned issues with the gpu. All in all I love Linux but I can't spend any time troubleshooting and just need a laptop that just works.

Whenever I try to go full Linux, 80% of the time I revert back to Windows due to lack of compatibility with games. The other 20% Is due to something breaking or being a pain in the ass to get working. Need to install a program? Here is a .deb file that you have to right click, allow execution. Then you go to execute it and it opens in a text document that has a run button that ends up taking 2 hours to load and ends up failing. Turns out you could go to terminal, CD to the file location and it seems to install.

But wait! 10 dependencies are missing.

I'd say its probably, among other thigs, hardware compatibility issues.

Running Linux on a mashine, most notably portable, that is somewhat recent and is not specifically built with linux in mind is, imo, almost certainly going to cause some, for the average user unfixable, issues. Things like wifi, bluetooth, audio, etc. not working due to missing or broken drivers.

The best way to fix that would be official Linux support by the OEMs, which realistically is never going to happen. Or extremely time consuming reverse-engineered community drivers.

Funding. Nobody has figured out how to fund development for large open source OSes outside of the enterprise realm. You crack that, you can have linux be installed by default on Desktop/Laptop computers, and patches that come as a result of that funding benefit the rest of the ecosystem as well. People will use the default, they will complain about it, just like they complain about Windows Update randomly restarting their computer, but they'll use it.

But also the share of people who own laptops or desktops continues to dwindle. Many people don't have and see no need for a computer. So they run Android, which is Linux, so I guess we're winning there?

The main challenge is resisting the urge to install Linux on your own. Because you will need help at some point, so start now by asking for help.

And then, when you don't find the solution by yourself don't waste time and ask for help.

In time you will get it enough to know what you're doing.

Gatekeeping and elitism

Unwarranted fear.

There is a perception of Linux as this hacker, terminal-only OS with a million equal choices and no direction or guides. This is not a true view or at least this is hyperbolic/based on Linux from 15 years ago. It is a stigma that Linux has. Every distro these days has to market itself as "We're the out-of-the-box distro" which is just silly. Out-of-the-box is meaningless. Even Windows users modify their OS in certain ways. However, it breaks the stigma.

Linux adoption just needs more time. Most of the big issues for adoption have been solved in the past few years, and Linux is ready and knowledge of Linux and removal of the stigma is growing.

Nvidia. Within two weeks, their shitty drivers broke my system twice. If I didn't already know about that beforehand, I would've probably quit linux for good after that experience.

One word : affordance

Getting some specific thing to work

People need to regain dignity and self-respect until then they will be fine being somebody's else product and revenue stream lol

Understanding what different distros offer and being able to make a educated decision about it. I looked around for a week or so until I found a arch distro that worked, took away the manual installation process as a complete noob, and wasn't all red flags straight away (the example is that a lot of ppl advised against manjaro). I ended up with garuda (which some ppl aren't a fan of because of chaotic-aur, but we have to start somewhere, haven't we) atm which works fine until I am confident enough to do a complete base arch installation the next time.

It's still software support. Yes, there are many great alternatives, but not being able to use apps like everyone and not being aplble to keep the apps you have is just too complicated for many

I come from a Windows and Mac environment and I now happily use Linux Mint. It has a similar aesthetic and is really easy to use. I think not recommending newbies Arch would be a good start.

Give them arch

Lack of patience and/or unwillingness to learn are what I see as the primary challenges to Linux adoption, and it can be addressed by leaving those kind of people to their own devices.

Honestly I think Linux has been on a great path with flatpak and appimages and graphical software centers. With BTRFS Snapper system recovery if an update goes wrong is even easier than the windows version to be honest. Honestly the big push now just needs to come from some corporate and also adoption at the early education level. One reason its so hard for people to switch from windows is because most windows users have at this point used windows and nothing else for 20+ years.for those of the millennial generation and gen z they've been trained to use windows literally since childhood. Linux and open source tech being free and open source would make it a great cost savings move forpublicc education institutions and getting newer generations of young people not straight indoctrinated into using exclusively windows is important.

But to do this IT departments need to have corporate fallback for support. We need companies like suse enterprise or redhat etc to do the corporate level support to even think about an endeavor like that.