Why would Linux succeed on the Desktop?

Speaking as somebody who switched from Windows 8.1 to Kubuntu 17.10 merely a week ago Linux is simply the better OS for Desktops if curated properly. It isn't my first foray into Linux but everything else was in Virtual Boxes and short lived.

The main reason that I didn't switch was that MeGUI is exclusive to Windows. I'm not a amateur computer user by any stretch of imagination but I'm not an expert either. I can't program anything, I don't understand how the Kernel works (yet), and my first steps at bash these weeks would have made for great comedy (I managed to overwrite my test files and must have worked on the script for a good 15 minutes before noticing - wondering why I was getting errors). Still Linux makes more sense than Windows.

When I was on Windows (no matter if 8.1 or the previous versions I had to suffer through) things constantly crashed. I've been running this PC for a week of normal and abnormal usage and the only applications that ever crashed where when I was trying stuff out and expecting it to crash (to my non-surprise Ex Falso can in fact not handle more than 20,000 mp3 files at once).

Mind you this is in-depth media coding and managing, and that's not a thing most people do.

The modular nature of the Linux Desktop is a blessing and a curse. It allows the super-nerds to tinker with everything in the system, but it needs a lot of maintenance. If we get people a properly curated distro to begin with, what the average person will want to do (surf the web, email, photos, videos, music, plug-in newly bought hardware and just have it work) has been so thoroughly freed from bugs that the experience will be better that with Windows.

People on here often forget how simplistic the computer usage of the average person is, and get caught up in arguments about how DEs aren't polished or how certain niche things don't work and if that where just there case a thing it totally would.

Linux is ready to conquer the Desktop. What is holding it back is people telling beginners to use Arch or Fedora (great distros, sure but not if adjusting the system timer is an adventure for you), popular software like Outlook as well as many games not being available and lacking OEM contracts.

/r/linux Thread