[mtomczak]

Sadly, I think the issues mentioned in this comment are exactly the point, primarily the last issue. Most desktop consumers using Windows and MacOS aren't used to dealing with a product that isn't a household name.

While lack of vendor support and advertising (no "one right way to do things") appeals to those of us who can invest time learning to maintain our software, people like my parents need someone to call when things go wrong. And it is extremely important that the person they call be courteous and accepting to a fault; my experiences with Dell customer service have been nothing but unhelpful, but none of them have ever chewed me out for failing to read the manual. My experiences with people apparently acting as volunteer service-providers for GNU software online (via IRC) have been both unhelpful and insulting. Perhaps the fault is mine for trying to find help on IRC; sadly, with a lack of a well-advertised vendor offering support, I'm left to scrounge help wherever I can find it.

To be fair, it is perhaps reasonable to ask the question of whether people in charge of most Linux distros actually should want to dominate the desktop. But if people do want to create distros that would move in on that space, they should understand that it's exactly these sorts of "subjective" assessments of the OS that would block widespread adoption. This isn't a technical problem. It's a sales problem---a problem of not investing as much time and money into the people-to-people interactions as into the people-to-technology interactions. Both are needed for widespread adoption.