In my opinion, its the fact that there are countless number of distros which create market fragmentation and thus confusion. There is no such thing as Linux on the desk top. There is linux running ubuntu or fedora or whatever.
Microsoft has Windows. It may be home or enterprise but its the same OS, just with features turned off so it works the same.
Almost all of those other problems would be solved if there was a big enough market for software and hardware developers to give linux more attention but the market doesn't grow big enough because of the fragmentation and confusion.
Linux is the same--all those distros use basically the same kernel.
The differences are what the distro developers put into each distro. Those are the "features" that are being turned off or on. ne distro may use Gnome, and another may use KDE. Same OS underneath, but different desktops, with different features. The difference is that the end user *can* install whatever desktop or feature s/he wants, without being dependent on the distributor.
The biggest difference (as I see it) is that most end users do not want the responsibility of freedom. They'd rather be told how to configure their machine and then bend to how the computer works, rather than the other way around.
Yep.
For most people, who consider their computer to be a commodity item like a toaster, TV or microwave, the attitude is “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.