[oolongCat]

The biggest reason why windows still has that grip vs linux is hardware based.

Try installing Ubuntu on a brand new laptop. Its just not something a non technical user can deal with. I am sure a good share of us here on HN has, at-least one relative who calls us because the "internet is broken" imagine them trying to deal with something like ubuntu on a brand new computer.

I like to think this is partially our fault as consumers, we need to actually do more to demand hardware vendors to support Linux. Especially laptop manufacturers.

[dragonsky67]

I've got a reasonable number of relatives who would not be able to install windows or MacOS on a new computer, they just purchase new computers.

In my experience installing a friendly linux like Ubuntu is a lot more simple than installing Windows. Unless the hardware is very new the install will just work. If you want to play games you may have to play around with installing the latest video drivers from the vendor, but how is this any different from what you have to do on a Windows machine?