[tomaloner]

Well - firstly consider the linux desktop has been touted as a "not yet ready" for 10? maybe 15 years.

While it was obscure, it wasn't targeted as often by viruses, malware, and the worst thing of all - commercialization.

Same idea as when anything obscure gets too popular. The original occupants (whether they're right or wrong) aren't too keen on seeing the crowds rush in.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> Well - firstly consider the linux desktop has been touted as a "not yet ready" for 10? maybe 15 years.

Depending on the user, it's been viable for that long, and we've even had non-techie users for a while now without much issue.

> While it was obscure, it wasn't targeted as often by viruses, malware, and the worst thing of all - commercialization.

If malware wasn't an issue with Linux running 90% of the servers on the planet, why would more desktop use matter?

> Same idea as when anything obscure gets too popular. The original occupants (whether they're right or wrong) aren't too keen on seeing the crowds rush in.

Right, but... Does it matter? If I just install, say, Ubuntu on my laptop and use it, what do I care if a billion other people use it too? If anything, driver and software support should improve without costing me anything.

[belltaco]

>If malware wasn't an issue with Linux running 90% of the servers on the planet, why would more desktop use matter?

Server admins are a different breed with different use cases than PCs.

A better comparison is Android. https://www.google.com/search?q=android+malware

[hazza_n_dazza]

T this time, when the crowds rush in, they will hit the ever rolling 'bug'wall of Linux. Its all good if you want firefox out of the box, but there are so many little things that still don't work on Linux that just do work on Windows. Things like game controllers, or my current mouse pointer breaking in Debian 11 with Plasma after I quit SCUMM from within SCUMM. I am an average user, and noone else in my house could fix the little things on Linux that take me hours! The real coders here will have no probs, but the rest will still have a flawed time and switch back - possibly for another 10 - 15 years?

[nopenopenopeno]

I think you’re right. The Linux open source environment is increasingly built and maintained for companies, not individual users. And this isn’t going to change. Mainstream Linux will be built and maintained for profit, open source or not.

[AnthonyMouse]

That doesn't work the same way when anybody can fork it.

Okay, so Ubuntu had Amazon integration for a while. But Debian didn't. And because Debian didn't, and people didn't like it, Ubuntu took it back out.

How's the outbreak of desktop spying that nobody asked for or wanted going on Windows? When the only way to put pressure on them there is to switch to an entirely different platform, that only works when you actually do it. Otherwise you're stuck with whatever they stick you with.

[nopenopenopeno]

>That doesn't work the same way when anybody can fork it.

This is idealism. In reality, building and maintaining software takes incredible amounts of organization and labor.

>Okay, so Ubuntu had Amazon integration for a while. But Debian didn't. And because Debian didn't, and people didn't like it, Ubuntu took it back out.

As Ubuntu gets more mainstream, the percentage of users who agree with your opinion will shrink and those who disagree will grow, and Canonical will proportionally depend more on the latter.

>How's the outbreak of desktop spying that nobody asked for or wanted going on Windows?

I use Ubuntu LTS myself, but mainstream Windows users almost universally couldn’t care less about desktop spying on Windows. And I hate to break the news but they aren’t going to care if the same comes to Ubuntu either. Snap is already making it far easier.

>When the only way to put pressure on them there is to switch to an entirely different platform, that only works when you actually do it. Otherwise you're stuck with whatever they stick you with.

And that will eventually be the case with Mainstream Linux. That is the point here. Open source is not a magic solution and FLOSS under capitalism is a utopian fantasy that has seemed surprisingly possible so far, but it is likely that we are merely experiencing some of the best of times for desktop linux.

[AnthonyMouse]

> This is idealism. In reality, building and maintaining software takes incredible amounts of organization and labor.

All of the work is already being done. Debian is a community distribution and is one of the most popular.

> As Ubuntu gets more mainstream, the percentage of users who agree with your opinion will shrink and those who disagree will grow, and Canonical will proportionally depend more on the latter.

Yet Debian will still exist.

> I use Ubuntu LTS myself, but mainstream Windows users almost universally couldn’t care less about desktop spying on Windows.

Nobody wants the spying. If your choices are get spied on or pay the full cost of a platform transition away from one that has been spending billions of dollars for decades to keep you locked into it, some people are still moving away from it over this! If you gave them the choice without the transition cost, basically nobody would choose the spying.

Which is the thing you get when forks are possible, because somebody just forks it and removes the malware. This is a characteristic of the license.

> Open source is not a magic solution and FLOSS is simply unsustainable under capitalism.

This is a weird position to take when it clearly already exists. Would having more users make community development less sustainable? There would be more members of the community so the average one would have to do less work to produce the same software.

Even if 99% of the new users are non-developers, the 1% who are makes it easier rather than harder to sustain.