I’m curious to hear thoughts on this. I agree for the most part, I just wish people would see the benefit of choice and be brave enough to try it out.
you only view those as positives because you are not the average user. for the average user those are actually negatives. The average user’s answer to “do you prefer systemd or sysvinit?” would be “why the fuck should I care? I just want something that works. And I want that something to work the same whether it’s on my personal machine or my work machine, or my mom’s.”
If you force the user to have to choose, most times they just won’t. So they choose something that does not offer the choice at all. Other operating systems do not require them to give an honest try at being able to try them.
Your hypothetical user could throw a dart at a list of distros and just install the one it hits.
but how does one ensure that their dart lands in the same spot as their employer’s and their mom’s? consistency is very important for the average user, at odds with us enthusiasts’ joy at being able to change anything.
I am not against linux, (I use arch btw) but I accept the fact that most people don’t find computers as exciting as I do.
Their employer is probably using Windows because they’re locked in so that’s a red herring. Their mom, if not using Windows for similar reasons, is probably using some variant of Ubuntu.