Linux

Honestly I think Linux has been on a great path with flatpak and appimages and graphical software centers. With BTRFS Snapper system recovery if an update goes wrong is even easier than the windows version to be honest. Honestly the big push now just needs to come from some corporate and also adoption at the early education level. One reason its so hard for people to switch from windows is because most windows users have at this point used windows and nothing else for 20+ years.for those of the millennial generation and gen z they've been trained to use windows literally since childhood. Linux and open source tech being free and open source would make it a great cost savings move forpublicc education institutions and getting newer generations of young people not straight indoctrinated into using exclusively windows is important.

But to do this IT departments need to have corporate fallback for support. We need companies like suse enterprise or redhat etc to do the corporate level support to even think about an endeavor like that.

I’m an artist who is never switching to linux unless they fix my major gripes (which seem like it’ll never happen just looking at the answers here lol).

Allergic to GUIs

• Devs and most Linux users act allergic to having intuitive GUIs. It’s already a pain to use a lot of small programs that don’t have them on windows. I’m familiar enough with using terminals for stuff but I am so incredibly disinterested in using it All The Time or even often.

Not having easy to access and understand toggles/settings are actually a friction point for most users—I think people who are tech inclined seriously need to remember and understand this. Needing to dig for a command to do simple things IS the OS getting in the way in my experience. I’ve seen screenshots of elementaryOS which seems to get this but my next issue is:

Software and hardware compatibility

• A lot of things I use for work like CSP, Adobe suite, Live2d, etc aren’t natively supported. I also don’t want to be risking encountering possible bugs or errors trying to get it to run them. Not all my games are from steam either, and I don’t know if those would run. There’s simply too many things I use daily that don’t have native support.

I also keep hearing about AMD driver issues which is no good for my pc.

Overall, as much as I hate windows and microsoft, it’s easier to put up and debloat the garbage that comes up over dealing with the issues above. Because when it works, It Actually Just Works. There’s more google-able tech support answers for it too instead of me needing to ask for help every time I encounter something.

Things that are easy to do does add up eventually, which again, is why needing to use the terminal often is not at all an ideal average user experience especially if this could be cut down with some mouse clicks. I think distros could address this if the devs actually care about the non-tech nerd user experience, but I don’t know if the software support/compatibility will ever be fully dealt with.

edited to fix formatting

Lack of backwards compatibility for older versions of software/games requiring older libs. All I see it lots of pointing back and forwards but it doesn't get solved.

Lack of legacy drivers for graphics cards. I want to run a new distribution on my old hardware, using graphics acceleration and no screen-tearing. Is that too much to ask?

If a program is executed through a wm, have it submit errors to the wm as well so I can see why it's not running, instead of seeing a loading cursor for 2 seconds and then nothing.

I want to be able to do 99-100% of what I want to do using a GUI. Even installing drivers and changing settings. I don't want to have to change things in a text editor just so I can have a simple shortcut on the desktop. I've learned how to do it and I can do it in my dreams now, but that doesn't mean I like doing it.

Fear of terminal

For me it's always been partly about ease of use, but the biggest thing is a superficial one. I just really enjoy a beautiful UI and slick UX. In these categories Windows is deep in the trash, but the bar for me is MacOS. An OS needs to make what I'm using it for easier and nicer, not have me spending time just making it work.

I haven't dipped my toe into the distro test pool in a few years, but every time I do I find myself spending more time sorting out the OS than just using it, and we'll, they just haven't been pretty to look at.

I think that's what it comes down to, distros can be decently developed but are often severely lacking in the design department.

I'd definitely love to know if any distros out there for that sort of vibe!