And Linux is fantastic for that, until you come across a use case that is outside those typical bounds.

Say your mom decides she likes photography one day and decides to buy a camera and take some lessons. Say her teacher says "we use lightroom and photoshop so you'll need to have these because they're industry standard" and she has no idea what to do and why the Adobe CC launcher won't load on Linux. Then she'll call you up and ask why it won't work, you'll respond with "there's no photoshop, you can use GIMP though" and your mom being a regular computer user won't be familiar with the eccentricities of GIMP as editing software and will be lost and unable to follow through on her new hobby.

This has literally happened to people in my life I've recommended Ubuntu to. Too many times to count.

That is a real problem, but in my opinion unrelated to whether an OS is "ready for the desktop". That's just a business problem, not a technical problem: Adobe cares about platforms where the money is.

It's not a technical problem because people like my mom can learn to use GIMP (note: people who use photo editing software are "pros" of a kind, anyway; "regular" users don't know how to edit photos, either) or Krita or whatever. But even if you fix GIMP's UX issues, it's still not Photoshop or Lightroom, so the problem remains: there's no Adobe software for Linux.

But that's not what being ready for the desktop is about. That's not what a desktop is for most people, either. All in my opinion, of course.

PS: if Lightroom magically makes it to Linux (hypothetical thought experiment), but then it's Overwatch or some other high profile AAA game that doesn't run natively, is it still a problem of the Linux desktop?

>That is a real problem, but in my opinion unrelated to whether an OS is "ready for the desktop". That's just a business problem, not a technical problem: Adobe cares about platforms where the money is.

Only back in the day part of the idea around "Linux for the Desktop" was that everybody would use the "better" FOSS programs, and not wait for MS/Adobe/Autodesk/Avid/etc.

But, as you note, this hasn't happened, and "even if you fix GIMP's UX issues, it's still not Photoshop or Lightroom".

>But that's not what being ready for the desktop is about. That's not what a desktop is for most people, either.

Well, pragmatically the desktop is a Windows machine, which just works, doesn't require them to think long and hard about which cpu/memory/laptop/peripherals/etc to buy, has drivers for all of their devices, has all kinds of apps they might use (beyond email and web), and so on.

> Only back in the day part of the idea around "Linux for the Desktop" was that everybody would use the "better" FOSS programs, and not wait for MS/Adobe/Autodesk/Avid/etc.

That wasn't really like I and many others envisioned, no. Free software have other benefits that make them "better", not merely technical issues.

Valve has been making amazing in-roads into the Linux gaming sector with Proton.

I'd say gaming is basically there now and it only gets better each year. I often buy games without checking if they are compatible and they run flawlessly.

If she gets seriously into photography the cost of a Windows machine is the least of the expenses she's heading into, but I understand that a main machine running Windows is a good insurance. And yet I didn't have one, even a backup, since 2009. I won't be too worried.

Those are just the common stuff that everyone does with a computer, but I think most people ends up adding one special thing to that list. For some that is gaming, others it's doing tax, photo editing, programming, or some specialty software for a niche hobby that few people think about.

Even my mum ended up using specialized software software for her knitting hobby.

I'd say you can do almost anything except the specialist software stuff. By specialist I mean "brand stuff"; for example, the problem with a photo editing course is that instead of teaching you the principles, they often teach you how to do stuff in (say) Lightroom, essentially compounding the problem. I understand why they do this -- it cuts corners and assumes a common ground; supporting a multitude of editing software the instructor might not be familiar with would be a nightmare -- but it doesn't help the situation.

If they taught you the principles of editing photos, without using brand specific names, you could do this with GIMP or Krita.

I do hobby stuff with my Linux laptop, by the way :)

If they didn’t show how to do it in specific software then I don’t think the majority of people would get it.

Agreed. Though I think the main problem is that an instructor cannot be expected to provide guidance for a dozen different tools. I understand the problem, I just wish they could approach this from an angle of general principles instead of specific tools.

This is something I don't think enough people consider. There's a very long tail of niche software for niche use cases, and even "casual" computer users are likely to end up needing something from that very large set.

The problem I see is increasingly that people who want to do the non-professional things lean towards tablets instead of desktops for them. Most people use their “desktops” for work and hobby things where what software can run on them is incredibly important.

Totally! I have to say in this regard, a Linux desktop is very satisfying. I game, watch movies, code, do videoconferencing, print stuff, edit photos, all without much tweaking -- if at all.

>That seems like a moving goalpost to me.

Reality is a moving goalpost itself. The desktops (Windows, macOS) aren't in some standstill waiting for Linux desktops to catch up.

But what you described isn't a "moving goalposts" case anyway. It's problems that need to be solved one after another and which all were initially present as issues.

Since at first, it wasn't usable, it wouldn't matter if it has Autodesk apps. Usability was more important.

Once it got usable, it still didn't matter if it had Autodesk apps, when it didn't have drivers.

Then, when it got the drivers, that only meant you could use your printer, wifi, bluetooth, etc. But the "crashing a lot" would be a problem greater still, greater than the lack of commercial apps.

>A "desktop" for me is where you can play movies, edit documents, browse the net and check email.

And for billions of people it's those things, plus work stuff they need to be able to run, multimedia creation they need once in a while, game stuff they like to play and so on...

Now that it does have most things in order, the lack of commercial apps is another problem it should work on (when it comes to people's needs).

> the lack of commercial apps is another problem it should work on (when it comes to people's needs)

I think that's a losing proposition. People like me who use Linux have mostly everything they need -- and there really is a lot for the Linux desktop these days. The people who need "commercial apps" are on Windows and MacOS already, and for them, the Linux experience will always be subpar (I'm assuming for them the vast quantities of FOSS are either not enough, or not easy to use). Moving to a "commercial desktop" like Canonical seems to be trying to do will result in a failure and alienate the current userbase who loves Linux for what it is. Attempts at gatekeeping, doubly so... just look at the reactions against every move Canonical does in this direction.