Why is Linux desktop not popular among non-programmers?

[Jeffrey Walton]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2025 at 12:46 PM Amit <amitchoudhary0523 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 9:41 PM Colin Law <clanlaw at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, 28 Jan 2025 at 16:01, Amit <amitchoudhary0523 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > The main point is that most of the non-programmers are used to Windows, so to migrate them to linux, there should be an user interface like Windows. I know there are few such distros but I think that there are so many diverse options in linux desktop that may be non-programmers get confused as to which one to use.
>> >
>> > If Linux foundation adopts one particular distro/linux desktop then may be it will easy for Windows users to switch to Linux.
>>
>> The main reason that most desktop and laptop PCs are Windows based is
>> because most users don't care what the OS is, they just buy a machine
>> and use it.  Since stores generally only sell Windows or Mac based
>> machines the typical user does not get a Linux option at all.
>
> I have heard this argument before but the point is that they don't sell Linux desktops because Linux desktops are not up to the mark.

Also see articles like "Microsoft Antitrust: “The Linux Threat on the
Desktop” (2006) and Predatory Response,"
<https://techrights.org/o/2009/01/22/microsoft-taskforce-vs-walmart-linux/>.

> I had once bought a linux desktop from Amazon in 2015 probably, and when I just started using it, I got an option to update something and when I did that, few things got botched by the update and probably wireless stopped working. So, I returned it.
>
> Companies will definitely sell linux desktops if they can make profit from it. But it is very hard to convince a non-programmer buyer to buy linux because they also know that linux desktops are not up to the mark.
>
> On my linux desktop, the native file explorer is far behind the windows file explorer.
>
> There was one more issue that I encountered - I had downloaded zip file of openjdk to do java development because I didn't want to install java. However, this presented a problem - for associating the java jar file with java executable program I had to write a .desktop file. So, I had to learn how to write a .desktop file. On windows it is simple - you just right click the jar file and then choose java executable program to run the jar file and the jar files will then get associated with the java executable program (no need to learn anything).
>
> I don't use windows because it is insecure. It can get hacked. Although I will also buy an antivirus but still I think that windows can get hacked even if antivirus is there.

Jeff