I think at this point it's pretty clear that it will never happen. The specialist software on Linux is often great, but those specialists are technical people. Software for business users is lightyears behind and nobody would convince me to use Gimp(I did try) or Open Office for( Also tried) in a business environment.
Governments would be a great beachhead to start increasing Linux adoption, if only the Microsoft kickback schemes to corrupt officials and derail competition could be curbed for good. See for example https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/07/22/microso...
Its not impossible, but it needs someone to figure out how to monetize desktop linux so they can then put the marketing effort in and pay a few companies to port big name apps such as photoshop that would give it some momentum and mindshare. A single profitable desktop would then give other companies a good target to port their own desktop software too, which would encourage more users and get to a virtuous circle.
But without that (and no one has figured out how to do it so far) I agree, I cant see it happening.
Can you share one or two aspects of FOSS office software that caused problems for you?
(from my perspective, it's a modern miracle to be able to run "apt-get install libreoffice" at a command-line and have freely-available, no-license required office software available within a few moments including nearly like-for-like functionality and file-format compatibility with other office suites)
Sure. I'll take my technical hat off and put 'the average office user' hat on:
I login to my Ubuntu account and head to Ubuntu appstore. It's a galore of half baked and a few well developed gems amongst them.
"Apt-get install libreoffice" is great for us geeks but if I'd go to my office colleagues and tell them to run some commands in the shell, they'd think I'm mad.
I have no doubts that both Gimp and Open office are close to feature parity, but the UX is just not there. The user interface has to be super slick everywhere because an average user is very spoilt.
One hope I have is that Windows have been going down the drain usability wise, so hopefully they'll screw up things even worse in Windows 11/12 etc, so the competition could pick up on it.
> if I'd go to my office colleagues and tell them to run some commands in the shell, they'd think I'm mad.
Depends on the colleagues, potentially - I often feel like I underestimate what other people are capable of learning, and that the resulting conversations can seem unintentionally condescending as a result of that (i.e. not preparing and demonstrating what's possible for fear that someone may not understand).
> The user interface has to be super slick everywhere because an average user is very spoilt.
Yep, that makes sense. However, whether I'm an employee, a business owner, an investor, or a partner who wants to see a business succeed: if I learn that the company is spending on software when there are lower-cost alternatives available that are ignored largely due to look-and-feel concerns.. some cognitive dissonance may develop. Especially if the potential cost savings could be pooled with others towards resolving those issues.
(on a potentially more practical note: what I hear from you is that user experience frustration can lead to dissatisfaction with software; I'm not sure what the best routes forward there are, other than encouraging further feedback and finding ways to improve and promote product design in user-facing FOSS)
