It's true, a working linux desktop system is pretty complicated and somewhat inelegant. But somehow, the more popular competitors are even more inefficient. The

It's true, a working linux desktop system is pretty complicated and somewhat inelegant. But somehow, the more popular competitors are even more inefficient. They spawn and exec processes slower, context switch slower, you can't run a minimal desktop environment on them, only the huge default one. ("min-win" being the minor exception here.) You can make a 50 MB bootable live USB with a minimal graphical desktop and a minimal web browser, based on linux. No such chance in less than a few gigabytes with the more popular alternatives. The bloat of actual linux distributions and desktops is mostly down to user demand.