Canonical doesn't really make any things that are considered part of a desktop OS. Ubuntu is just a package (and some argue a bad one) of things made by other people.
There's very little value in the Linux desktop and I don't see that changing anytime soon. You're probably best re-inventing the wheel if you want a Windows competitor, like Google did with ChromeOS.
There's a tremendous amount of value in the Linux desktop. It's used to do amazing things every day.
What you mean is that it's very hard to turn it into a business model, which I'd agree with. But these are not the same in the world.
To the average user, linux is not in any state to be a useable, daily driver desktop. Where it works, it is the exception, not the norm.
Taking linux and turning it into a business model can be done - see valve and the steam deck. Granted, that is gaming-only but it can be done. The #1 problem with the linux desktop is that there is no single linux desktop and things break far too often.
"You and me" is actually not a small or meaningless demographic. It includes my thousands of colleagues at Mercedes-Benz who use Linux desktops to do engineering work, and millions of other developers. It means a lot of scientists, for example at NASA and CERN. It means a lot of school students and government employees in educational and other municipal deployments.
A lot of the places where Linux is used is for roles that act as multiplicators, e.g. in the development and production of end-user products, or research/science/RD that will lead to new ones, or in educating the people who will one day make new ones.
All of this is a lot of value if you sum it up. There may be no single shining CEO and his shareholders getting rich off of the Linux desktop in the way we're used to fawning over in the tech hustle news cycle. But the world at large almost certainly is. I submit that's a fine success metric.
> To the average user, linux is not in any state to be a useable, daily driver desktop.
For many users it's today more reliable than contemporary Windows. Ten years ago, the Linux desktop experience for a non-technical user was death by a thousand papercuts. Today there are still some gaps in HW support that can create unsolvables, but if your machine is well-supported, things work just fine.
What's mainly keeping it back is many other factors, from channel availability to software availability.
> see valve and the steam deck
:-) I worked on the Steam Deck as CTO of one of Valve's contractors on the project. Glad you like it.
My first attempt on Linux was 20 years ago, before I was a technical user. It was a nightmare. Getting my mouse to work was impossible. Even figuring out how to turn the computer off so I could reinstall Windows was a pain.
I came back to Linux some 8 years ago, already as a Developer. Installed Ubuntu. Everything hardware worked well, no need to tinker around. Usability was good and somewhat intuitive, but it took me some time to adjust. I enjoyed it for programming, but not being able to play most games I care about limited my use, and I kept Windows in dual boot.
Nowadays I use Linux Mint as my only OS. It's objectively better than Windows in every way. For regular usage I don't even need to tinker with anything. Although I like the terminal and prefer using it, I can totally see how an average user can get by without touching it at all. I need only to tinker a little to get certain games running, and that's all.
Not who you're responding to, but I am extremely grateful for the work that was put to make gaming on Linux possible.
I may not own a Steam Deck, but it's development allowed me to switch entirely to Linux without looking back.
I've switched about a dozen average users to Linux from Windows, and they have all been happy with the change and have not switched back.
Based on that, I say that Linux absolutely is usable as a daily driver desktop. The only place I can see where Linux might not be the right choice is with a certain class of gamer -- but those gamers are not "average users".
> The #1 problem with the linux desktop is that there is no single linux desktop
That's a strength, not a weakness. For the user want a windows-like desktop? Done. Does the user want something more to their style of working? Done. Not being locked into the desktop means that if your objection to desktop linux is the UX, there's probably a different desktop that will make you happier.
For it to be ready to be a mainstream desktop, it needs to just work.
How many average users install Windows by themselves? Most people just take their Windows laptop to a store/service provider for maintenance, buy a new PC because "the old one is slow now" or have their nerdy fam member once a year remove mal/spy/adware and run a reg cleaner. And yes, show them things.
Like OP, I've converted many family members over the years to Linux desktops, and as the resident nerdy family member, the amount of maintenance and assistance I need to provide has gone down very decently vs. supporting family Windows sytems.
My 70+ mother in law has no problems using a Linux desktop to run her book club and other things she needs to do, but is far less likely to accidentally install malware. I used to come back to these systems a year later and find a system tray full of 20 new icons, a stack of 5 new browser toolbars, ad popups and "install new version" popups galore and other horrific stuff that needed hours to clean up or required a wipe and reinstall.
There's a lot of Windows users on the fence about Linux that absolutely underestimate how technical they are and how much active and passive maintenance they do on their Windows systems. Are you a tech user who reads The Verge or Ars Technica and knows in advance about that bad new option in the new Win11 update that you will switch of day 0? Do you have your mental laundry list of five settings you change in every new Windows system you acquire? Most Windows users are and do not.
The truth is, a lot of people have a working body of knowledge about how to admin and keep alive a Windows system, and a Linux switch requires re-learning and re-acquiring similar knowledge at times. And it's absolutely fine if you don't have the time to do that. There's value to that existing body of knowledge, and there is a switching cost. Some people have better things to do than installing Linux. But Windows is not magically maintenance/upkeep/difficulty-free.
Installing Windows is a more complicated and confusing job than installing Linux. The people who have to be shown how to install Linux also have to be shown how to install Windows.
The fact is that I don't really show them how to install and configure this stuff -- it's really very easy. What I do is hold their hand to get them past the fear of the unknown.
But in reality, the hardware support is in the kernel, so any distro with a more up2date kernel would fare at least as good. As for the software Canonical produces, I'm not great friends with anything. Snap is crap, Netplan is just a renderer to systemd-networkd or networkmanager, MAAS is a pile of garbage, Juju never caught on, upstart failed, Unity failed etc...
We're running a lot of Canonical at work and I'm not particularly impressed.
There is a reason why Canonical was the first option when Microsoft introduced WSL.
Only because no-one has disrupted the market. Typical case of “Who would pay for a Mantis open-source bugtracker”, then Jira appear and companies purchase it.
What you mean is, who would pay for Ubuntu. But I’d pay for an open-source macOS, with online backups, video editing and SSO for my IT fleet, anything that doesn’t look like Ubuntu.