The main reason for the Linux operating system not seeing widespread adoption is because of its multitude of distros. Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, Mint… there are just so many choices, just like how when someone asks how to join the Fediverse people will response with “which instance?”
Who the fuck cares about instances and whatnot when an average grandma just wants to make a post on knitting in a supportive community? It really turns people off and without niche communities, there is no way Lemmy will grow any further than its current state.
Without niche communities, what are we going to talk about? Memes? Just programming-related stuff? (I can just surf stackoverflow for that) It can be fun for a while but without diversity, the site will just devolve into boredom and circlejerks. I love this place to death and really want to see it grow, but man, seeing how confusing it can be for an average user makes me anxious for changes.
edit: paragraphs & grammar
edit 2: I’m not saying the Fediverse should be something else. Just like someone here said it better than me, Fediverse can be as complicated under the hood as it wants, but the end user does not need to know that. It must be presented in a way as simple as possible, with plenty of signs and helpful directions.
I won’t nitpick how Linux is a kernel not an OS but how is it not widespread? It just runs basically the whole internet…
The reasons the average Joe doesn’t use it for their desktop are convenience (Windows and macOS come pre-installed) and that you can run into technical issues due to bad support by hardware vendors. The latter is a chicken/egg problem and will possibly never be resolved.
Anyway, I disagree it’s due to the number of choices - we don’t need monopolies. Your grocery store is full of different brands of cheese and all of them still stay in business.
Google has a monopoly on search, Youtube has a monopoly on videos and that helps aggregating interesting contents and users towards the product. Social media platforms thrive on user growth. I had Linux as a daily driver also (until it badly messed up my ssd), but customer support and friendliness are definitely limited parts about Linux that scare people away.