Why Linux isn’t more popular: key disadvantages explained

First and foremost is that Linux usually doesn’t come with a lot of bloatware like I mentioned in the intro of this video, kind of like Windows does — pre-installed apps and features that I will never use — and this makes the OS feel very bloated in many ways. On the other hand Linux is super lightweight depending on the dro of your choice, and it usually only comes with the most essential programs.

Which leads to my second reason — Linux runs so freaking smoothly to the point where you can install it on super old hardware and make obsolete PCs be usable again, which we did in an earlier video, and wow it was like night and day compared to Windows 11.

Okay, and my last reason that I like Linux would be because of privacy and security. Now I know people are going to point out that Linux isn’t some kind of unicorn when it comes to security and it’s true, there is malware and viruses out there specifically targeting Linux. But there’s no denying that if you’re developing a virus you’d be more inclined to target OS like Windows that you would develop the virus for anyway.

There’s many more reasons that I could mention here that why I like Linux, but let’s get into this article from makeuseof.com that lists seven possible reasons as to why Linux isn’t dominating the OS desktop market and see if perhaps there’s deeper issues as to why Linux is not as popular as it should be. Oh and I’ll also leave a link to this article in the description if you want to go check it out for yourself.

Okay, reason number one — Linux isn’t backed by a corporate entity. Big companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google back Windows, Mac OS and Android. These companies bring in a whole specialist marketing team to the equation that helps them gain large chunks of the market share.

I totally see where this argument is coming from and there is some truth to it. Marketing your product does help to make it more popular, and it’s true that bigger tech companies can increase market share with ad campaigns and things like that. And I know this is an unpopular opinion but in today’s world I think that you need a smart good idea or a very aggressive strong confidence statement to make it big.

I guess like a good example would be something like OnePlus, a smartphone brand back in the day when they started. Their first phone was like OnePlus One, which was named the Flagship killer, and it had amazing specs and low price, and people really bought into that. That aggressive statement really helped them gain market share and at least you know get their foot in the door.

Like here’s another example — everyone knows the Edge browser, right? Say whatever you want but Edge is actually a really good browser now. It’s built on top of Chromium, it runs well, has cool features, and guess what — it’s backed by a corporate entity, Microsoft. So let’s see, can we pull up the browser market share please? Less than 5% of people as of making this video are using Edge.

Anyway I think I made my point. I’d have to disagree with this first reason and instead say that I think Linux perhaps has a different marketing issue here, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s related to it not being owned by a corporate entity. In a way it’s actually perhaps even considered a strength in many ways.

All right, let’s move on

Using the terminal is not everyone’s cup of tea. Okay this one gets thrown a lot at Linux fans. All right, I don’t necessarily disagree with this statement, but at the same time with modern Linux you don’t really need to worry about the terminal that much if at all.

Like in one of our videos I installed not one not two but three different dros that did not require me to use the terminal. Now in fairness if you are doing something more specific, like there’s a program that doesn’t work or doesn’t support Linux and you can’t install a program via the package installers or you’re troubleshooting something like a hardware issue, then yeah you might have to use the terminal, right?

But generally I would say that most apps are super easy to install.

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All right, back to the video.

Anyway I wouldn’t worry as much about using the terminal unless you get an issue with your hardware or something like that. It’s no longer 2005. Linux I’d say is pretty noob friendly overall.

Okay, makeuseof you got me there. It feels like a personal hit there. So here’s the list of a bunch of programs that aren’t supported for Linux. For me personally the biggest one that hurts the most is Adobe. Adobe, why you don’t have — why we don’t have Photoshop or Premiere on Linux. Like we just — I can’t.

So here’s the thing guys, as a content creator I use stuff like Photoshop and Premiere all the time. That’s the thing that I use to make these videos, and I would say that majority of YouTubers this is their bread and butter. That’s what they use to create content on YouTube. So in a sense with that you’re basically cutting out that part of the market right there and down with Linux.

I should note however that not every creator relies on Adobe, but it’s definitely one of the most common content creation tools out there. And as they point out right here there are alternatives to pretty much everything. However the issue here is that people might not want to change their workflow after working with whatever they use right now.

Like if you give me GIMP and told me to make a thumbnail, like I could probably do it, probably, but it would take me much longer than if you know I’m using a program like Photoshop which I’m more used to.

But anyway getting back on track, yeah this is the definite issue for Linux and I do agree with this reason. And honestly it all comes down to publishers and developers and perhaps even us users. They have to recognize that Linux is a big deal and we have to I guess keep requesting, sending them messages to their support team to bring these apps to Linux. But yeah I wouldn’t hold my hopes up for Adobe to budge on that.

All right, let’s move on.

Okay this is interesting — an ecosystem of apps and services allows you to effectively perform your operations across various devices. True. Examples of such ecosystems are Microsoft Office, Outlook and OneDrive etc etc.

Okay again I see where they’re going with this but I wouldn’t necessarily agree that I use Windows for its ecosystem nor Apple. Like I know that companies — this is a huge milestone for them — they want to have an ecosystem to make users stay loyal, and Apple is probably the best at this, right? Their stuff just works seamlessly across all of their hardware and software.

But at the same time it’s kind of a bad thing as well. Like sure you can AirDrop a file from one Mac to another Mac or an iPhone very easily, but if you need to send a file from an iPhone to a Windows PC yeah it’s a bit more complicated than that.
And I don’t like that companies often use their ecosystem as a retention weapon. Maybe that’s a bit much, but users feel like hostages if they want to switch from say Apple or Windows or vice versa. Like oh you’re going to lose all the ecosystem features, you better stay with us.

So in a way ecosystems, like I’ve said before, they’re great if you use only specific software and devices, but it can also be a total pain to go outside of that ecosystem. Again I’m more of an opinion that it’s a retention tool rather than something that you would use an OS specifically for just for that. That’s just my take on that. I think Linux having an ecosystem wouldn’t really be that beneficial and honestly I’m not sure about this one.

Let me know in the comments what you think about Linux potentially having a better ecosystem and how that would impact its market share.

And what they mean here specifically is like tech support, right? And it’s actually a really good point that they’ve made here and I haven’t really considered it before.

Quite frankly I agree with this that some distros can be difficult to troubleshoot. Windows and Mac OS, because they’re so popular, there’s tons of users who might have a similar issue to what you might have. Could be that a certain program doesn’t work or maybe there’s like a bug or something.

This generally means that you can just simply go on a Google search and most likely you’ll come across a solution or someone who had a similar issue on how to fix it, or realize that there’s no solution and yeah then that sucks.

In fairness Linux can be quite similar, especially if you’re using a more popular distro like Ubuntu and such. But I mean for casual users they do rely on official support quite a bit and yeah I just don’t think there’s going to be a support forum for the Hannah Montana distro. There’s just — I mean I’m sorry — it’s not going to be there.

All right, we’re getting near the end here.

I love this one — choosing between so many distros can be confusing. And yeah, kind of.

Let’s do a quick experiment here. So I’ll pretend to be just a Windows 11 user who is tired of Microsoft and he’s tired of Windows and I just want to, you know, I heard about this Linux thing and I just want to give it a shot. So let me just do a quick search for download Linux.

Let’s see what it comes up. Download Linux, enter.

All right, so I see like two pages here. One is like linux.org that lists a bunch of distros that I can choose, just lists like popular distros. The second search is basically download Linux Mint — shout out to Linux Mint — there you go. And the third one is getting Ubuntu.

Anyway I’m going to just conclude my experiment here and say that choosing a Linux distro is not hard.

Look it can be confusing you know, but for the most part what’s going to happen is someone’s going to say look listen try Ubuntu, try Linux Mint, try Pop OS or something like that. Just give it a shot, see how you like it. That’s it.

And it can be confusing in a sense that you know like there’s so many things to see and there’s so many things to try, like which one are you going to use, right? But generally if you go with a mainstream distro like again the ones that I mentioned here you’re probably going to have a really good experience and you don’t really need to do hours and hours of research just to figure out which one you need.

Though you totally can spend time and figure out which one you like the most, which is kind of a blessing of Linux.

Oh boy, right, so this one hits really really where it hurts the most. I’m a big gamer myself, I don’t know if you guys knew this, but Linux does have issues with gaming and this one is kind of a controversial one and I’ll explain why in a second.

Like you’re going to start commenting like what about Wine, what about Steam Deck and such. Yeah that’s a fair point, listen I understand that, but most people, all right most people, they just want things to work, right? And they don’t want to deal with compatibility layers or checking if the hottest game out there will work with their Linux distro or not.

Even older titles like Rainbow Six Siege, right here we’re checking it out right here, it is still not supported on Linux. Like what the hell. And so is Destiny 2, PUBG, The Finals — I mean that’s a pretty popular game right now, it’s the hottest thing right now as we’re making this video — Lost Ark, Black Desert, Battlefield 2042 and Call of Duty.

So if you play any of these you’re kind of out of luck.

Oh but just use Wine. Yeah well Ubisoft will literally ban your account if they detect that you are doing anything of the sort, so that’s not really an option. I guess you could stream them, question mark.

Overall I’m sorry but the last reason is 100% correct. And of course if you don’t care about gaming at all then yeah this won’t impact you and consider yourself lucky.

Okay so in conclusion why Linux isn’t more popular, I think this article brought a lot of good points and arguments as to why that might be the case and it’s probably a combination of all these things, right?

I’ve said this many times but for me it all comes down to general familiarity. And we see this in a lot of industries as well. For instance an iPhone user is more likely to stay on an iPhone and same goes for Android, unless something groundbreaking happens, some kind of exclusive thing that is all so good and you need to get this product, then sure.

Same goes for software. Then yeah you might actually switch from what you’re used to and try that new thing. But for the most part I’m sorry but people just don’t care.

Now what can Linux do to become more popular today? I mean that’s more of an interesting question, right? I think spreading general positivity about it is definitely something that can really help, you know showcasing how easy it is to understand it, how easy it is to choose a Linux distro, right? And really I think breaking down that complexity can really help too and compare it to other OS’s like see like this is pretty simple, you don’t need to be a programmer to use Linux. You really don’t.

Or even simple stuff like asking people like hey did you know that Linux can literally revive your old PC? Yeah go check out this video right here, we actually made a whole video about it.

But until then thank you for watching and have a good one.