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I'm going to get downvoted for this
Open source has its place, but the FOSS community needs to wake up to the fact that documentation, UX, ergonomics, and (especially) accessibility aren't just nice-to-haves. Every year has been "The Year of the Linux Desktop™" but it never takes off, and it never will until more people who aren't developers get involved.
Not here to downvote. But I will say there is some good changes as of the past five years.
From a personal perspective: there's a lot of GOOD open-source software that has great user experiences. VLC. Bitwarden. OBS. Joplin. Jitsi.
Even WordPress (the new Blocks editor not the ugly classic stuff) in the past decade has a lot of thought and design for end users.
For all the GIMP/Libre office software that just has backwards ass choices for UX, or those random terminal apps that require understanding the command line -- they seem to be the ones everyone complains about and imprinted as "the face of open-source". Which is a shame.
There's so much good open-source projects that really do focus on the casual non technical end user.
If you make that argument about the state of software in general, I'd agree to an extent in the sense that it should be more prioritized. But I don't see how that applies to open source in particular?
In those aspects proprietary software is just as bad, if not even worse. The difference is simply that the default choice of software for most tasks is a proprietary software. They can have a shit ton of unusable and confusing mess, even intentional dark patterns, but users will adapt.
There's a reason why Apple is the poster child for accessibility. They control the entire stack from hardware to OS, and have an ocean of money to devote to what is effectively a tiny marginalized portion of their user base.
Open source is the exact opposite. Any given open source project (especially any given Linux distro) is standing atop a precarious mound of other open source projects that the distro maintainers themselves have no control over. So when accessibility breaks, the maintainers say "It's not us, it's GNOME". Then GNOME says "It's not us, it's Wayland", and so on.
Imagine I handed you a laptop without a working screen, then when you complain you can't use it, I said "It's not my problem" or "We'll get to it eventually" or "I wouldn't know how to help you" That's desktop Linux when you're blind.
Apologies if this comes across as a rant. I'm just bitter about the fact there's all this free, privacy-respecting software out there that's out of my reach, and I'm stuck selling my soul to Microsoft and Apple.
While you generally have a point, the year of the linux desktop is not hindered by that. Distributions like Linux Mint, Ubuntu and the like are just as easy to install as Windows, the desktop environments preinstalled on them work very good and the software is more than sufficient for like 70% to 80% of people (not counting anything, that you cannot install with a single click from the app store/software center of the distribution.
Though Linux is not the default. Windows is paying big time money to be the default. So why would "normal people" switch? Hell, most people will just stop messaging people instead of installing a different messenger on their phone. Installing a different OS on your PC/Notebook is a way bigger step than that.
So probably we won't get the "Year of the Linux Desktop", unless someone outpays Microsoft for quite some time, or unless microsoft and Windows implode by themselves (not likely either)
Theres no singular year of the linux desktop as every year is the year of the Linux desktop, as long as Microsoft keeps shooting itself in the foot and Linux marketshare rises slow bit by bit
I'm a reasonably new Linux at a place of trying to learn how to improve/optimise my system, and honestly, Google's Gemini has become my user manual.
If I can't figure something out then I could trawl through a bunch of forums where the issue doesn't really match mine, or the fix has changed since OP had the same problem, or I could just go straight to an LLM. I understand that they have a tendency to make shit up on the fly (this is a great example), but when it comes to troubleshooting setup issues they're really helpful. And yes, I kmow that's because they've already ingested the support forums. But it is genuinely so much quicker to sort things out, while learning as you go.
It's made a world of difference to me in my IT support services business. It's not always right, but it's always helpful even when it isn't. It's far better at looking at a page of log information and picking out the one bit that explains why the thing I need to work isn't working. I've been emboldened to do a lot of projects that I was previously uncomfortable with. The key is I know enough about nearly anything that I can tell when im being led down a garden path.
The quality of the prompt is everything.
Yes. I can post a terminal output into it and it'll tell me exactly what's not working and why. And that's incredibly valuable.
Ironically, I used Gemini to help me build a little app that takes a copied YouTube link and uses yt-dlp to download it to my Jellyfin server in a format that'll play nicely on my Apple TV. I can't imagine how I'd approach achieving that if I had to start from scratch.
Funny you make "missing documentation" an argument against open source and for closed source, as if the average Windows user reads any documentation or even the error messages properly.
your comment is a joke.
Linux fan boys mad when regular users exist
I'm not even a "regular user" per se, just not a software dev. I'm a network administrator working in a data center. I think a lot of FOSS devs think their users are like themselves, they love to tinker and don't mind if their PC is a project. And sometimes I do like to tinker, but sometimes I need a computer to be a tool, not an end in itself, and desktop Linux rarely serves in that capacity.
Weird considering I need my desktop to just be a tool as well, and Mint really does that for me. Just my experience tho.
Huge difference between having it and not needing it and needing it and not having it.
I think the person you're replying to is 100% correct since you're coming at them so heated
I get what you're aiming at. My perspective is that the regular user typically is forced into a state of learned helplessness.
You learn Windows and don't look further because you learned Windows = normal computer, MacOS = fancy expensive computer. If you cannot see the problems it is very hard to sell the solution
Regarding UX - that stuff is hard to get good. When you're that good it's often more lucrative to get paid for that skill set compared to passionately designing FOSS.