Why we will never have the year of the linux desktop!

I watched a video that made me thing about FOSS software and why we will probably never have a mainstream linux desktop.

Beyond the horrible UI

The video mostly talks about bad UI and only briefly touches on the other major problem of FOSS.

What all the problems boil down to, is a inate hostility towards mainstream users and/or a lack of understanding of said users.

Like the video touches on, all the interfaces, troubleshooting, tips and bug reporting, is centered around the tech savvy.

Being a Linux owner will at some point require you to go into the terminal to fix things you didn't break, mainstreamers don't do that.

When you encounter a problem, you are referred to BBS' full of outdated information and when you ask a question, you get a snarky answer with a link to an article that doesn't solve your problem.

Linus Torvalds and userspace

It's interesting that to this day, the father of Linux, possibly the father of FOSS, still preaches "don't break userspace".

He still to this day has the user in mind, but a lot that came after treat them as hostile witnesses.

This really shines through on software like LibreOffice or Inkscape that are genuinely really good tools, that would be capable of replacing Office and Illustrator.

But the messy and unintuitive UI, partnered with terrible documentation and snarky communities, makes them not a mainstream option.

I'm not saying it has to be commercially viable like Blender, but the fact that I won't recommend either to anyone, as I know I will sit with the support problems, speaks volumes.

Does that make FOSS software bad?

It really doesn't, I personally love LibreOffice and Inkscape and hate the lack of features when I am forced on the closed source cousins.

But I still took the time to learn and use the shitty UI and functions I don't use a lot, is still a 10m trip to Google to find, because they are not in logical places.

Interface annoyances

One of the worst parts of FOSS software (this has gotten better), is going into the settings/preferences menu to change a default setting.

You get introduced to thousands of settings, often with no filtering or search, only preset tree's to guide you.

While it is nice to be able to change everything, I will bet you 950 of those 1000 settings will never get touched.

It becomes a further compound problem when settings aren't set to optimal for most use cases and untouched settings don't just follow updated defaults.

As a user you end up with the Windows shock of a completely new environment when reinstalling.

How to fix it all?

It's simple really, ask the users, use public roadmaps with vote features, have someone that is user facing, make it easy to report back, run user tests.

There are a lot of options, probably more than my quick rattle off and you only need a few to vastly improve.

I volunteer as well, you are welcome to contact me if you need someone to talk to users or even just ask for feedback!

I have tried getting involved in several FOSS projects with these goals in mind, but the general attitude is that the assistance is not wanted.

So my solution now is to write this, in the hopes that someone reads it and spreads the message of, maybe think about your users.

Created 2025-03-20 - Updated 2025-03-20