[marcodiego]

>Truth is that a shite miserable 25 year old xfce could be customised in a way good enough to compete with OS X

In terms of appearance, maybe. Make that work consistently with most used programs with the same shortcuts, composition, behavior and rich integration between all these apps and then we're talking.

Getting everything working reliably, beautifully, integrated and fast demands many people thinking, designing, implementing, testing and fixing. It is very expensive and only affordable for companies that can make enough money with to return the investment. Linux has no presence on the desktop because vendors that make the most money with it have 0 presence on the desktop.

[kitsunesoba]

Additionally, out-of-the-box functionality matters a lot. DEs like XFCE have insane tweakability, but outside of a handful of settings most users don't take advantage of that. The majority of Windows and macOS users don't spend hours tweaking their setup to perfection, they just install Chrome and Spotify and maybe vertically orient their taskbar/dock if they're feeling spicy and it's off to the races.

And moving the needle on the out of the box usability front often requires changes that can't be made by changing the default configuration or becoming a contributor to an existing DE. The GNOME team would likely never approve of the changes seen just in the short blogpost, let alone anything more extensive.

[smoldesu]

>The GNOME team would likely never approve of the changes seen just in the short blogpost, let alone anything more extensive.

That's kinda the point of PopOS in the first place: retrofitting GNOME and Ubuntu with extra utilities for a better "out of the box" experience. Manjaro does basically the same thing on the Arch side of the fence, and both are essential to providing that experience you're describing. The GNOME team isn't intentionally holding back features or making intentionally bad choices here, they're just part of the brick in the wall. The GNOME desktop should be bland, so that the distro can provide a default and the end user can make changes where necessary. It's all part of one big machine.

[smoldesu]

Linux has no presence on the desktop market, yet apps like Steam and Spotify are ported to it, often with special considerations in mind. If we're talking about market share, you can have it: but in terms of software availability, everything is on Linux now. Wine is good enough to run any Windows app carte-blanche, and all of the most common apps (eg. Telegram, Discord, Zoom) have native clients.

Getting everything working reliably, beautifully, integrated and fast is not a matter of manpower, it's about the modularity of your system and the power the end-user has.