> growth and momentum behind Linux and self-hosting as better evidence that change is afoot.

Linux is still not user friendly enough. Products from two decades ago are more user friendly than modern "mainstream" disros.

Look at Matrix and other OSS that wants to be mainstream. It's got awful UI/UX. And it's never taken off.

Gimp is an ugly beast with a bad name. Nobody's using that unless they're a Linux nerd.

I do see lots of people building retro game collections. Analogue 3D was a huge hit. Massive demand. It's sold out instantly five times. Palmer Luckey has a company building a similar product, and that's also sold out.

The clothing stores sell cassette tapes and vinyl. iPod and Zune are venerated.

My wife is Gen Z and into mainstream culture. She's all about retro. Polaroid, Instax, 2000's era digital cameras. The low end consumer digital camera I bought for $100 or so in 2004 is now selling for more than that. These things are wildly popular.

They're even hunting down old disposable one-use film cameras to pop off the lenses.

In any case, my wife knows this stuff. She doesn't know what Linux is.

> Linux is still not user friendly enough

have you not touched a steam deck? it does the job well.

when the gabecube comes out, linux as a desktop i think will gain a lot of popularity

> Linux is still not user friendly enough. Products from two decades ago are more user friendly than modern "mainstream" disros.

> Gimp is an ugly beast with a bad name. Nobody's using that unless they're a Linux nerd.

It depends on the use case. The vast majority of computer users nowadays use only the browser and an office suite. Even email clients are a thing of the past.

It's true that Gimp doesn't have a great UX, but who spends time photoretouching on the computer, when one can do it in a few seconds on the phone?

Gimp and on the other side Adobe itself, are a special kind of sad story IMHO