I'm not proposing anything here, I'm curious what you all think of the future.
What is your vision for what you want Linux to be?
I often read about wanting a smooth desktop experience like on MacOS, or having all the hardware and applications supported like Windows, or the convenience of Google products (mail, cloud storage, docs), etc.
A few years ago people were talking about convergence of phone/desktop, i.e. you plug your phone into a big screen and keyboard and it's now your desktop computer. That's one vision. ChromeOS has its "everything is in the cloud" vision. Stallman has his vision where no matter what it is, the most important part is that it's free software.
If you could decide the future of personal computing, what would it be?
I'm not talking about how it is today, I'm talking about how I think it should be in the future. Of course there are reasons why the things are like they are today, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't or can't change.
Someone buying a Windows laptop or Android phone for example doesn't need to check if that OS is well supported on that hardware or whether they will get official support for it. The device comes with the OS and the manufacturer guarantees that it will work, that is what we should achieve for desktop Linux as well. E.g. those dev machines with Linux preinstalled and officially supported by the OEMs are a great step in the right direction, but we need that for the regular consumer across a wide range of devices!
Unofficial versions are versions created by the community because the manufacturer of a software doesn't officially support it on your platform. A simple example would be Flatpaks for Discord or Teams, or running games with Proton or regular programs with Wine. If it works it works, but the original devs won't invest any time to improve it, and they might even break things in new releases because it's just not on their radar.
And many of my friends and family do think about privacy a lot, but most of them just cannot fully migrate to Linux without extensive and continuous help from me or other techy friends/relatives. They cannot fix a broken boot or a game that won't launch unless you tweak the configs! They can use a preinstalled Windows or macOS however, and they can call/write the support of whatever they want to use if it doesn't work. There is no reason desktop Linux can't reach the same level of official consumer support, and it needs to in order to be a true alternative for regular people. They should not have to sacrifice comfort for privacy and freedom.
Again, you don't understand Linux. There never will be official consumer support for Linux. Also Linux is the wrong answer if you don't want to fix problems yourself.
You are free to think that, but I completely disagree! Desktop Linux is in this "you have to fix it yourself" niche by necessity right now, not because it's a good solution. And it actively prevents most people from enjoying its benefits.
I mean I upvoted because you can have your opinion anyway, even though I disagree. But I really don't get how people rely on support to fix there problems. I never contacted windows support or whatever, I always researched myself how to fix something. I feel this is like an illusionary argument.
I mean, do you do everything around you yourself? Do you fix all your appliances, do the plumbing in your home, do your own health check-up, complete car maintenance and repairs, all the details of your finances, and so on?! Probably some of it, but we all have things we cannot do ourselves, or where it just makes sense to let people with more knowledge and experience do it for us.
For many computing is exactly that, I guess because the abstract logic of computers just doesn't come natural to them, and it can be very complicated if we are being honest. There is extensive customer support in that field for a reason. I'd say the majority of people couldn't fix a broken package installation if their lives depended on it, not without substantial time investment, education and training.
You just can't expect most people to know how it all works and be able to fix everything themselves , but they should still be able to enjoy the benefits of free software imo. Just like I can keep my home warm in the winter without having intimate knowledge about how my heater works and being able to repair it myself. I can just call the landlord and get it fixed the next day.
First paragraph I fully agree. But I fail to see the point why that should'nt be true for Linux machines then. If you don't have friends/colleagues which can help you do stuff, you need to get your own hands dirty. Relying on "support" is nebulous. You cannot even call anybody from Microsoft "support".
And if you are in need of such support, there already exist solutions: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com https://system76.com/ Not sure what more you are looking for...there never will be Linux distro fixing all its problems by itself.
I'm not just talking about M$, most software and hardware should support Linux officially. And support also means making the usage with Linux easy and robust, having official instructions for Linux, being able to return it if it doesn't work with Linux, and so on.
Tuxedo and System76 are exactly what we need imo, but at a much bigger scale. I want Linux to be on almost every PC and laptop, and that would mean every major OEM supports it.
Okay but your wishes will never come true in this world. So maybe work on it from another perspective.
Linux is not aiming to achieve more market share anywhere. Nor does it want to hold your hands to solve all your problems without you having to put effort into it.
How come you can see the future and speak for the entire Linux community?
man future