My story is freebsd 4.x-7.0, then debian (codenames I forgot), then OSX 10.5-10.9, then unbuntu/mint since ~ 2014-2016 maybe (when gpu and os updates broke it again). I also supervised an entire office of debian/ubuntu + printers & scanners for few years. I’m not what you would call a regular linux hater, and it has it’s own unquestioned throne at the server side.
But struggling with the drivers, laptop battery health, suspend issues, lack of business software, configuration, etc etc etc is too much for a regular user who wants things to be done. I was trying to create a scalable solution of win->linux transition for small offices at our company, and it failed. I was converting simple (non-gaming) home users to linux, and it failed most of the times.
I’m not even going into partition and breaking changes in DE teams here, which are de-facto your walled garden version of corp, inc.
>constantly compromising and taking the enclosed garden path has its drawbacks for the larger community
This I am not doing though. I’m using all the software you’re using, including bash, ls, soffice, gcc, etc. I’m all gnu, all unixway, but just not linux kernel & DE and that only on a desktop.
>those people are more significant in terms of software development and user advocacy
But I am one of them, except probably 20x of average experience and real advocacy attempts.