I'm fully aware the F in FOSS stands for free-as-in-libre. I'm also aware that FOSS developers by and large refuse the exchange of any and all money both as buyers and sellers for services rendered.
You say developers of free-as-in-libre software can charge for them, but in practice any developer that tries to sell his free-as-in-libre software will be viciously laughed out of the room by everyone else.
The F in FOSS in practice stands both for free-as-in-libre and free-as-in-beer. And you don't get to talk about the quality of free beer.
I don't think it's unreasonable to demand that products and tools don't spontaneously combust frequently, so long as that demand is based on warranties and other such professional/commercial guarantees.
FOSS's primary problem is that the goal is the tool itself, rather than what is done with the tools: Commercial software exist to let the end user achieve something, which in turn generates profit for the commercial developers. FOSS exist to let the FOSS developers achieve their dreams, end users be damned.
A video editor crashing every hour is a problem for the end user, but if the FOSS developer doesn't care then that's that.
This is why Photoshop will continue to surpass GIMP, and why exceptional FOSS like Blender succeed where other FOSS do not.
If Micro$oft keeps enshittifying their OS at current rates, I bet a lot of people will get fed up and jump ship to Linux after one or two more windows releases.
Windows 11, for all its faults, enables me to do the things I want to do on a computer. Likewise Android, and to a lesser degree even iOS and MacOS I admit.
Linux however demands me to do the computer, it doesn't enable me to do anything because I'm too busy doing computer bullshit. This isn't necessarily surprising, since the goal of Linux (more accurately FOSS) is to use FOSS and isn't concerned about what I need/want to do.
So no, most people (or at least myself) will not move from Windows to Linux. I use computers to do things, not preach the holy scriptures of FOSS.
It’s getting better, and with more people working with browser based tools the underlying OS is becoming less relevant. That said, the Gnome folks do seem user hostile. And I get that most Linux distro users like to tweak their config (part of the joy of their experience), it does lead to choice paralysis for a lot of folks. Add that hardware support can still be hit and miss (I concede that it has improved massively), it’s still not the computing panacea that the more enthusiastic and vocal proponents would have you believe. Likewise, neither are macOS or Windows panaceas, nor are they as repugnantly shit as those same folk would like to tell you either.
>Linux's interface is still archaic compared to windows 7 unfortunately.
I'm amused that I find myself preferring Windows 11 Explorer with its bloody worthless context menu and taskbar to anything FOSS has to offer.
GNOME? It's sincerely cancer. KDE? No software actually uses it. xfce/LXDE/et al.? Look, I'm not going to use a GUI that demands I go CLI some plain text files to change settings.
You say developers of free-as-in-libre software can charge for them, but in practice any developer that tries to sell his free-as-in-libre software will be viciously laughed out of the room by everyone else.
The F in FOSS in practice stands both for free-as-in-libre and free-as-in-beer. And you don't get to talk about the quality of free beer.