> don't bother targeting this class of user since they aren't someone who needs a desktop OS If they only want to consume content, then yeah, they have little

> don't bother targeting this class of user since they aren't someone who needs a desktop OS If they only want to consume content, then yeah, they have little need for a desktop OS. They still stand to gain from a system with less surveillance. I found the LineageOS install process to be pretty simple, but I have some tech experience. It seems to me that a good first step would be legal mandates that users be able to unlock the bootloaders of their mobile devices and reflash. Even if the end user doesn't have the skills to do it themselves, at least phone service shops could do it without having to use a questionable, unauditable, exploit tool. I think the world would be a better place if more people were interested in making stuff, and making stuff becomes much easier with a full-featured OS. So, to me, that population is still worth targeting with a "think of the cool stuff you could make". What's the solution? I don't know. Encourage kids to repair, reverse-engineer, and build their own stuff, from software to hardware? Support the "maker" trend? When I was a kid, I had dreams of building robots and it seemed totally out of reach because there was little going on in my town. Nowadays all the pieces are available commercially off the shelf, many are cheap, and some are quite well polished: I certainly evangelize the Arduino when I see a simple automation problem that needs to be solved on the cheap. Then again, I work in an academic research environment where buying the corresponding industrial-grade hardware would take a big bite out of the budget. In this setting, it's easier to justify spending a little on hardware, and more on hours. I think the calculus is similar in the developing world, so maybe they're the ones to target. As I understand, Linux is doing better there than in the US. > FLOSS software isn't (usually) developed as a product. Very little consideration is given to the end user experience in terms of convenience, simplicity, flexibility, etc. That's for damn sure. I don't have any solution for that other than the wishful thinking above: if more people were interested in and capable of making things, then maybe there would be more pull requests with small fixes for bugs and usability warts. FLOSS development today seems a lot like herding cats, so maybe adding more people will just make it worse. But, instead of a user firing off a poorly written bug report, probably directed to the wrong section of the project tracker, it would be great if more of the userbase instead had the expertise to make bugfixes and submit them. I am enjoying this back-and-forth, but if you've been around the net a time or two and are totally sick of discussions like these, I understand. I think we already agree about a lot of this.