Does Linux really fail in desktops?
Yes, miserably. After almost 3 decades of free and open-source development, Linux only has ~0.9% of the worldwide desktop computer use so we by definition have to consider that a failure. Linux fails in desktop/personal computers only* though.
Common criticisms often include support nightmare, daunting upgrade, command-line based installation, and no game.
Yet,
The main reason why Linux is failing in the desktop environment is a BIG EGO
As of January 2020, DistroWatch lists 278 major distributions. Why so many and what is so special in all of them?
Borrowing a similar oversimplified narration from a Quora post: At first, there were a few main distros: Debian, Red Hat/SUSE (Fedora), Gentoo and Slackware. Let’s pick Debian.
OK, Debian is stable and awesome! But it lacks cool stuff. Some devout developers started to work on a lightweight Linux, Knoppix, while others started to work on the more versatile version, Ubuntu. Let’s pick Ubuntu now.
Ubuntu was received well, yet many people did not like the Ubuntu interface. Shortly after, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, and Xubuntu popped up. A little bit after, some people came up with distro focusing on multimedia, Ubuntu Studio. Others wanted yet a more comfortable interface, so they made Mint. Another group of developers did not like green in the Mint user interface and changed colors to blue for new Linux users, so ZorinOS was born. Google wanted an even simpler version, and they made ChromeOS. A few people wanted it to be more like macOS, so they made Elementary OS. Another person wanted a more secure version so they made Parrot OS. Some people hated all of it, so they made Solus and similar stories for the creation of hundreds of others.
As crazy as it sounds, all distro that I specifically mentioned them in the previous paragraph have currently active development and community with a strong devotion that often inimically criticize — or hate — others. Have you ever had a migraine-causing conversation with some distro freaks or even lurked in Unix StackExchange obnoxious arguments? Jeez.
? OMG
As time progress, instead of working together, all this workforce is watering down because all of them have to fix the same problems over and over again instead of working together to a common goal. So we came to the absurd tree diagram above.
Just imagine if all these people worked on the same (or a few specialized) Linux version. We had a high performance, stable, user-friendly, free and open-source Linux operating system — most likely better than macOS and Windows.
* While smartphones running the Linux-based Android mobile operating system dominate the smartphone market,[2][3] and Linux is used on most servers, almost exclusively run on the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers, and is even used on the New York Stock Exchange[4], Linux-based operating systems have failed to achieve widespread adoption on personal computers.[5].
