The Linux desktop is a lost cause and the author is better off moving to other things. Not only is desktop a dying segment, but it requires the largest amount of work on driver support (why is my six year old off brand printer not working?), is filled with proprietary apps and companies that make money selling software to end customers who have no incentive to port to Linux (Adobe/Serif are why I still have to keep a Windows VM sitting around), and it requires constant work to keep things working on top of every graphics stack, one of which is famously proprietary (NVIDIA please just open source your drivers already) which reduces the incentives of using Linux in the first place.

You also have GNOME shipping on Fedora and Ubuntu which most new users are going to download, which can't even get their stuff together enough to put a freaking dock and activity indicator on the desktop without having to completely switch to a different activities screen. Asking for a dock will literally get you hung in the village square as people assert that normal users want to use keyboard shortcuts. Everything on the Linux desktop has to either be old fashion or eclectic and tailored to the tech enthusiasts already using it (one of the things that Elementary was actually solving). I tried getting my dad to use GNOME and he gave up after five minutes to go back to his Mac (I can't even launch an app?). It's a mess. Every other distro is basically being held together by a scrappy group of volunteers that are supposed to compete against millions of dollars of investment and armys of full time employees.

I feel bad for Elementary. They made a good product that was actually sane for people coming from MS/A, but they were never going to turn it into something super profitable or even sway companies like Adobe etc. to get their apps running natively on Linux.

This isn't doom and gloom about Linux. Linux owns computing. It's more about how Desktop is niche and not even worth getting into at this point, and how the author has much to gain by just walking away and moving on to other ventures.

Edit:

You can downvote all you want if it brings you catharsis, but you know I'm right. The year of the Linux desktop isn't right around the corner, just like it wasn't right around the corner last year, or the year before that. Linux desktops will always be for enthusiasts, students who want to learn Linux, or people who have to use outdated hardware, which is honestly the way it should be so that Linux keeps its identity and doesn't become yet another replaceable component in a proprietary stack like it is on Android (I'm looking at you Fuchsia).

And no, it doesn't matter that you're reading this right now on Sway using lynx and your mother and sister are using Ubuntu that you installed for them. You are on HN. You are not the segment that makes Linux desktops a lucrative business idea. A software engineer needs to know how to think about market segments and the normal user use cases and not be completely self absorbed into how the world works for them.

This may well just be troll bait, but anyway:

I've been daily-driving KDE/Plasma for... around 7 years now? And I have a really low tolerance for daily technical nuisances. There have been some issues over that period, but honestly not more than I would have to deal with on other platforms.

I also introduced a partner to Elementary a few years back and she has absolutely fallen in love with it despite the shifting set of glitches it has on every update (she calls "personality"). She's clever but not especially technical and had no Linux experience beforehand.

As I see it, there are essentially three desktop platforms to choose from: Windows, Mac, and Linux. Windows is moving in an ad-supported direction that I want no part of and there's even more that I dislike about what Apple is doing (and this from someone who was one of those weird die-hard Apple enthusiasts in the 90s).

So I didn't switch to Linux because I'm fanatical about it, but because it was my option of last resort for having a desktop environment that I felt like I could largely control and use the way I wanted to use it. And, it has turned out that I'm really happy with it, most of the time.

That's probably not going to be a persuasive argument for the average casual computer user. On the other hand, tired tirades against "the year of the Linux desktop" completely miss the fact that Linux is a completely reasonable desktop experience today.

yeah, i have basically the same opinion. i like my M1 mac, but it's got some rough edges that are no worse than the things people call dealbreakers if it happened on something other than an apple product.

and i tried using windows 10 shortly after it's release and just couldn't.

people like what they're used to. if you're used to windows, linux is a tough sell. but if you're used to linux, so is windows. linux people like to worry about how it is perceived by the average user, but the average user fails all the time on any operating system.

My problem with Linux as a desktop is that it invariably breaks, and when it does, I have to waste a day figuring out what the hell is wrong with it. Windows 11 Pro is close enough to the things I like about Macs to make the switch, and I can run Linux in the hypervisor so that I never have to touch a Windows shell. Hell, I can even run Linux desktop apps right next to my Windows apps.

My next system is going to be a lightweight Linux host with a pile of VMs and something like https://github.com/casualsnek/cassowary, with juicy enough hardware to make it feel like I'm only running one OS.