“the majority of people aren’t and aren’t really interested in in having to spend a great deal of time re-programing a niche system so that it will run the software they need.”
What software are you referring to? I have been running Ubuntu on a 10 year old laptop for several years and it has all the software one could possibly want. Plus, I don’t need to search the internet to find drivers for any device I can plug into it, try that with windows. Under Linux, plug it in and it works, no drama.
There are post on this thread and all kinds of post on Linx help sites of people looking for help with trying to get Linux devises, take a look around.