The main reason for the Linux operating system not seeing widespread adoption is because of its multitude of distros. Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, Mint… there are just so many choices, just like how when someone asks how to join the Fediverse people will response with “which instance?”
Who the fuck cares about instances and whatnot when an average grandma just wants to make a post on knitting in a supportive community? It really turns people off and without niche communities, there is no way Lemmy will grow any further than its current state.
Without niche communities, what are we going to talk about? Memes? Just programming-related stuff? (I can just surf stackoverflow for that) It can be fun for a while but without diversity, the site will just devolve into boredom and circlejerks. I love this place to death and really want to see it grow, but man, seeing how confusing it can be for an average user makes me anxious for changes.
edit: paragraphs & grammar
edit 2: I’m not saying the Fediverse should be something else. Just like someone here said it better than me, Fediverse can be as complicated under the hood as it wants, but the end user does not need to know that. It must be presented in a way as simple as possible, with plenty of signs and helpful directions.
Windows is where it is because of Microsoft’s aggression. There’s no essence inside Windows that makes it widespread ex nihilo.
Linux isn’t as widespread as it could be because many people don’t realise it’s a viable alternative to Windows or Mac. It has nothing to do with how many distros there are. Also, newbies are usually recommended Ubuntu or Linux Mint, so it’s not even “so many choices” to begin with.
Also, you do realise you can interact with instances other than yours, right? I use lemm.ee btw.
It maybe better to not refer new users as newbies. People know the unix system under the very successful product that is MacOS. Why is MacOS successful? Because it is easy to use and is a complete products with few bugs. I used to use Ubuntu, and before that kde btw.
Newbies are new users. Also the average Joe doesn’t know or even want to know that MacOS is a BSD. MacOS is mostly so successful because of marketing, walled gardening and a pretty good eco system. It has its fair share of bugs. And not just software side but also on the hardware side.