Being different for difference's sake doesn't mean much if it's not useful.

It's like saying a certain screwdriver must be made with a smooth ball point to be different from other screwdrivers. Nevermind that nobody can figure out a use for such a screwdriver and everyone happily (or begrudgingly) goes back to using flathead, Philips, and Torx drivers.

Most people don't care about free-as-in-freedom software or open-as-in-auditable source code, they just want to run Office and Photoshop and maybe play some snazzy games. A tool must first and foremost be useful in order to achieve mainstream appeal, Linux has consistently failed to do so because it is flat out not useful for most people.

If achieving the "Year of the Linux Desktop" is a real goal of the Linux community at large, some fundamental changes in ideology must happen:

* Acceptance or at least tolerance of proprietary source code (eg: Nvidia drivers). Most users don't care what philosophy of code they're running, they just want their computer to work and be useful.

* More emphasis on GUIs and a refined user experience. Neckbeards might only want the CLI and consider anything else below their ability to care, but most users want a good GUI like in any other widely accepted operating system.

* Accept that there can be such a thing as too much choice. Developers don't want to look after their code on five dozen flavors of Linux, some consolidation and stabilization of distros and runtime environments are a hard requirement to beating the chicken-or-egg problem.

* Less hostility to new users and outsiders. The elitism within the Linux community at large is stupid. Being a CLI wizard doesn't give anyone a higher horse to ride on, and it's not going to attract new users anyway.

* Less marketing emphasis on liberal and FOSS ideologies. They're all fine concepts to have, but most users care about free as in free beer, not free as in freedom. Cater to what users want in order to win users over.

Linux can be many great things, but its ideologies and philosophies hold it back in a wider world that values usability and practicality more than freedoms and openness.

If "Year of the Linux Desktop" is not a goal, then Linux can continue as it currently is. The enterprise world will be Linux's stronghold for the foreseeable future as before, and the desktop world will continue moving on with Windows/Mac/iOS/Android like always for better or worse. But Linux can't then complain the desktop world keeps disregarding them, because priorities are different and Linux chose to be incompatible.

Desktop linux is useful to lots of people. It is not a ball pointed screwdriver.

I'm just one linux user. But my impression is that the "the year of the Linux desktop" is a joke even in the Linux community. I don't really care about world domination for Linux (although that's almost what we have on the server side).

I want a healthy enough market share for software availability to be good. For me, it is pretty good. I had to spin up a Windows VM for the first time in about 5 years last weekend to set up my doorbell with the manufacturer's utility. Otherwise there are more than enough games that run well on Linux to occupy the time I have (which isn't a lot). All the basics are covered and everything else is on the web. Dev tooling is second to none.

I want a useful, powerful, general purpose computing environment where I can do what I want without unnecessary obstacles, whether or not that what I want is aligned with the business model of a vendor. The philosophy is abstract, but in my view it has a real impact.

No software is "free as in beer" to create. I really don't know, but I wonder if marketing it as such would be a bad idea. Free software projects often need contributers as much as users. Companies with bigger marketing budgets want their stuff to be valued.

Otherwise, I agree with most of what you said about onboarding new users and less technical people, as well as fragmentation and ABI stability. Some of it is a necessary trade off - if people have the freedom to make changes to their software, you're going to end up with more diversity compared to ecosystems where that's not allowed.

Nvidea have announced the open-sourcing of their driver for Linux compatibility. Perhaps the GPL die-hards were right to hold firm in that...

The term "neckbeard" is an unkind stereotype. Please reconsider your use of it.

I know there are many reasonable and respectable people in the Linux community, a lot of my friends are as such, but they are sadly not the guys at the forefront of Linux development and marketing at large.

I have no plans on reconsidering calling certain parts of the Linux community neckbeards. If they want to force their ideologies down other peoples' throats ("you fix your intellectual property problems", "proprietary code is evil", "use the terminal", etc.), I'll call them how I see fit. Respect is earned, as they say; and they certainly aren't respecting the users nor the world at large.

That aside, objectively it can't be denied that Linux doesn't satisfy most users' needs. If it did we wouldn't be having this discussion nor would Windows have 80~90% of the desktop market. You're fortunate to be someone that desktop Linux can sufficiently provide for, but not everyone is like that.

Windows/Mac/iOS/Android for all their faults can satisfy the needs and desires of almost everyone, it's something Linux critically fails and needs to improve on regardless of worldly aspirations.

Nvidia open sourcing large portions of their driver was a welcome turn of events, though like you I'm not sure if credit for it should be given to the anti-proprietary diehards... :V