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.
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.
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.