I feel like Linux is a better contender now then it was in 2004. Or am I just in a "developers tech savvy world" and viewing linux as a viable contender now compared to the typical layman?
It is still unlikely Linux will achieve any sort of mainstream adoption (for a few reasons, including Ubuntu following a very Microsoft-like policy of going all-in with touch at the expense of UX for traditional desktop users, continued fragmentation of the various distros, etc), but at least these days it isn't nearly as surprising to learn some of your more casually tech savvy friends use Linux as it would have been back then.
So, it is uncertain whether it will ever be the case that the majority of devs use Linux although I guess there's a good chance of it happening if Apple ever decides to abandon the desktop / laptop market.
There are a lot of great things about linux and some of the desktops are quite good (gnome 3.4+, kde) but they just aren't quite there with the small glitches and annoyances that come up just often enough to be off putting for end users.
I think linux or another free OS needs a huge backing to make it mainstream and we may see that with android (or something in a similar vein) in the future but for now the desktop is left Apple and Microsoft
Don't work on open source, unless you do everything each person wants (and these may be conflicting) then someone will decide it isn't open enough regardless of the actual license.
Anytime someone comes up with an extremely good app.. It magically becomes part of iOS leaving that person high and dry. Done. With. That. Shit.
With proprietary OSes I constantly have the feeling of banging against elaborately engineered limitations. This feels so counter-productive. Instead of producing something great why not spend incredible amounts of work-years on creating artificial limitations for the users, right. No thanks.
In other words I like my computers to be general: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg
GNU/Linux + X11 + Gnome/KDE never went anywhere near mainstream, perhaps, but Linux sure as hell did.
When we talk about Linux as an OS, we don't talk about Linux as the kernel. This is very tiring to read this everytime. The Android userland has nothing to do with any of the Linux distros out there.
It's not Linux who went mainstream, it's Android userland. Try running Android applications in "non-Android" Linux for good fun.
...we talk incorrectly. Linux isn't an OS. Linux is a kernel, around which many OS's (Ubuntu, Red Hat, ChromeOS, Android, for instance) are built.
For the typical layman, what matters is mostly "can I get it and use it without thinking about it", which is, really, more about major vendor (both hardware and app developer) adoption than it is about substantive features. Insofar as Linux is a contender there, for the average individual user, its largely in the form of ChromeOS rather than traditional desktop linux distros, not because ChromeOS is more feature appropriate, but because of its backing.
There is a reason Microsoft is running negative ads about ChromeOS and not about, say, Ubuntu.
From a development perspective, Linux has been adequate as a main OS for a long-time, though better virtualization solutions make having to choose one OS full-time -- or use comparatively awkward dual-boot solutions -- less a reality.
Nowadays, OSX is seen as the alternative to Windows more than Linux is.
However, in some years the Valve's Steam support can make Linux the OS for gaming enthusiasts everywhere.
In fact, it was even earlier too, e.g all around 1999/2004, when Linux was discussed to win the Desktop "any day now".
There were even desktop targeted Linux distros backed by companies such as Corel, startups working on Linux desktop/office desktop stuff (like the Evolution email client or the Nautilus file browser), and skyrocketing Linux IPOs (VA Linux anyone). Plus several attempts at releasing pre-installed Linux PCs at places like Walmarts (that most people bought for cheap and converted to Windows).
Red Hat went public on August 11, 1999, achieving the eighth-biggest first-day gain in the history of Wall Street.[0]
So maybe in a business sense Linux had a better standing versus windows back then compared to current day.