Most Linux users don't care if Linux succeeds in the mainstream. You're fighting an uphill battle if you need to get the general community on-board, and they li

Most Linux users don't care if Linux succeeds in the mainstream. You're fighting an uphill battle if you need to get the general community on-board, and they literally just don't care. Users who don't care, don't care because they went through the trouble of becoming Linux experts, and they had fun doing it. They don't care about anyone else's experience. In fact, maybe changing Linux to be more beginner-friendly will cause it to be less fun for this type of user. The ones that DO care, overwhelmingly just want to see Linux "win" (whatever that means) without compromising a single thing about how Linux currently is (see the blowback against systemd, snap, flatpak, nvidia drivers, Ubuntu in general, System76 making a new DE in Rust, etc.) The remainder of users who do care, just want to help people regain their privacy by leaving the big tech ecosystems. These users don't really care if Linux is hard to use, they will go to great lengths to maintain privacy. And they expect newly converted Linux users to do the same. So if the userbase is hostile to what you want to do, what do you do? You can change the minds of the userbase (hard to do when everyone is so dogmatic), or you can expand the userbase and bring in a new segment of users who care about different things. Usability over privacy and "winning". System76 is quietly doing this already. And that mirror's Drew's conclusion in this post. To make something with mass appeal, you'll have to charge money for it.