Linux

There are a lot of factors I think.

Some are pretty legitimate, like the lack of Adobe or Autodesk support on Linux, which means a lot of people just 100% cannot participate in their industry using Linux. It's borderline illegal to use Linux if you're a mechanical or civil engineer; Solidworks and MATLAB are pretty much regulatory requirements; you'd probably lose your engineering license if you turned in a drawing made in FreeCAD. In the art space, tell a publishers you drew something in Inkscape and watch their personality leak out their ears. Everyone hates Adobe, but glory to Adobe.

There are also legitimate culture shocks; there's this LTT video where they had iJustine on, and Linus and Justine swapped platforms, he on a Mac, she on a PC, and they were given basic tasks like "install Slack. Take a screenshot. Paste that screenshot in a Word Processing document. Save it as a PDF. Send that PDF to James in a Slack message. Uninstall Slack." Justine immediately started looking around the back of the monitor for USB ports, rapidly found that a fresh install of vanilla Windows doesn't (or didn't at the time) come with a word processor that could save documents as a PDF, Linus immediately went to the web browser instead of the app store...They did similar stunts with their Linux challenge later on, though I'd kinda argue about the tasks they were set to do (such as "sign" a document, which Linus started to do cryptologically but didn't have any keys enrolled because who the fuck does, and Luke just...copy/pasted an image of his handwriting?) But anyway. Linux is different than Windows to use, and even a VERY windows-like DE like Cinnamon is going to have differences that will feel foreign. I remember tripping over "shortcuts" being "links or launchers depending on what you want to do."

There's also the fact that Microsoft has done a world class job at making the average normie hate and fear the command line interface. Because universally, when you see a cmd prompt appear in Windows, it is a bad thing. That hate gets transferred to Linux, where we do routinely use the terminal because while it can be a little arcane, with a little bit of learning you can do some powerful stuff. But, because people have been so conditioned to hate the CLI by Microsoft, you get exchanges like this:

"Hey I'm trying out Pop!_OS because you nerds keep saying it's good, and my laptop can connect to the internet with ethernet but not Wi-Fi, what's up with that?" "Well let's see, could you open a terminal and type sudo lshw -C network, and then copy-paste what it says here for me to look at?" "NO!!!11!! NEVAR!!!! How DARE you suggest I use a computer by doing anything other than pointing at little pictures?! The indignity! It's current year!!"

Finally, before I hit the character limit for this post, there's just a reputation around Linux. I've had this happen more than once, someone will ask to use my computer to look something up on the internet. "Sure." They find the Firefox icon on the quicklaunch bar just fine, it pops open, they're doing fine, then they notice the color scheme and icons are a little different and they ask "uhh, what version of Windows is this?" And I say "It's Linux Mint." And they lift their hands off the keyboard with the same gesture as if I just told them my cute furry pet in their lap is actually a tarantula. They have it in their head that Linux is deliberately hard to use because it's for computer nerds--they think all Linux is Suckless--and because they're not computer nerds, they can't use Linux. So the second they know it's Linux, they "can't" use it.

Many (most?) Windows users find Windows to be frustrating. I find Gentoo to be extremely frustrating a lot of times. Frustration doesn't really drive people away from tools that are necessary to them.

I put Linux Mint on my grandmothers old computer because the hardware was preventing it from upgrading from Windows 7 without massive slowdown. Back when she was using windows (albeit windows 7) she would call me every week with a new issue. Since installing mint she very rarely has issues and whatever issues she does run into can usually be solved very easily over the phone. I would say that Linux is what you make it. If you want to copy and paste commands from sketchy guides, things are going to break. But if you just use it like my grandmother does, browsing the web and writing emails, nothing can really go wrong

Using it since I was 12

People have been using X since that age so anything different is going to be jarring. Just the smallest roadblocks can put people off of stuff. Why bother learning something new when the old thing works?

Because I like to play videogames.

That's it. That's all that keeps me back. I can't play Destiny 2 on linux and I'm an addict with a need.

Try OpenSUSE, GUI for software, system, settings etc. And boot to previous snapshots if you break something

Simple tasks can take you way more time than needed. For example, I have an old laptop under Bunsenlabs (based on Debian with Openbox). The other day, I wanted to connect a secondary monitor. I wasn't expected the nightmare I had to setup this thing. The layout was totally off with a dead space between the two screens where the cursor disappeared and ArandR was very rough to use. I ended up editing txt file if I remember correctly.

I absolutely love Linux but this kind of thing happen quite regularly to be honest.

It’s not plug and play

Contrary to what is often claimed Linux may in fact be better for people with realtively simple needs. I basically use Linux to run a browser and Steam and don't run into many problems on a day to day basis.

I only touch windows when I absolutely have to, and luckily that is getting rarer over time

Because clicking a button, finding out it works sometimes but not for you, then the top 3 google links might have a solution to parts of your problem, and you'll have to type in commands to run stuff you probably ran less than 20 times in your entire lifetime, kinda sucks. Even if you try to learn what actually went on, you'd need to do mental gymnastics.

Having multiple buttons to click and have what you want done almost all the time is much easier in comparison.

Source: was once a beginner, although it does get easier.

Watch my dad use a any computer if you want to see frustration.

You are doing something wrong. I stopped distrohopping ~13 years ago and never had to reinstall OS after that. If I get error messages, they are helpful enough to figure out the root of the problem (unlike that in Windows, where everything under the hood is hidden from user). For me Windows and macOS are frustrating, not Linux.

Maybe Linux is not good enough for you, maybe you are not good enough for Linux. Anyway, don't constrain yourself, use software that you are comfortable with.

While this isn't the only reason, I think part of it is that linux, windows and osx are good at different things. If you move from windows and try to install your favorite windows programs, you're probably going to have an experience that's worse than the windows one. If you move from linux to windows the experience is much worse in that regard. To really see the value of linux you have to get used to having e.g. a tiling window manager or a package manager (tbf, chocolatey on windows is ok). But when you're just getting into it, linux just feels weird and convoluted in comparison.

I think the issue is that while Linux is capable of a lot when you can take full advantage of it, each task requires way more knowledge or a good tutorial and no complications.

For me, I love working with Linux and have been doing it on and off for decades, but it doesn't tend to remain my daily because of the extra steps and limitations.

I think if I had a more full working knowledge of Linux and I knew Python or had a stronger grasp of other languages, I'd be a lot more able to fill those gaps. But without that, it there are all these barriers to productivity that aren't there otherwise. Instead of doing the thing I'm trying to do, i end up spending the night messing around with some depreciated program or struggling with a weird use case and it simply requires way more of my time to get there.

Considering that I have a lot more experience with Linux than the average person and still run into this regularly, I'd say it's a big barrier to wider adoption.

Honestly the solution is probably more on the end of getting together to make some of these issues less complicated than on the end of expecting everyone to become a well versed Linux enthusiast. With such a high learning curve, unless you're using it for something it's particularly good at doing easily, you kind of have to want to get into Linux for its own sake in order to learn enough to make it easier to use. And even then, it's a struggle sometimes.

It is hard to adapt Windows habits to Linux for some cases. E.g. you sometimes use Adobe Photocrap for editing photos. Reasonable that ppl want to use what they know, so they will try to use it with WINE and obviously will fail. „Linux sucks, it cant run the properitary shit subscription software, going back to Windows!“ if someone really depends on such software then yes stay the fuck with Windows. For most other tasks there is a solution available. And for the fear of terminal: I bet most users never ever have to see or use it once since there are GUI tools available for such crucial tasks like updating. Mint does a great job in terms of windows like experience for beginners but also is a full fledged GNU/Linux distro. But yeah if you want to change to Linux it is not just the desktop that changes, it is a whole philosophy that opens up a new world if you are curious.

Most of the time the frustrating thing is it's users. If you look for help about something that is obviously badly designed somehow... You get gatekeeping or "you're using it wrong" responses.