I have used and installed linux many times. I have ubuntu on a dual boot on this computer. But linux on the desktop is going nowhere now that android is on the scene. Yeah, I understand that android is based on linux. But android is the big alternative man on campus now.
For me, as Linux on the desktop got more and more mainstream, I started to feel more and more left out. I moved from Debian to Ubuntu because I thought "I just want my computer to work without having to mess with it". Over time, Ubuntu made many decisions that I disagreed with and I spent huge amounts of effort trying to figure out how to uninstall things (which is quite difficult for a Debian based distro since the configuration often assumes you want everything integrated).
I finally ended up with an Arch system running xmonad and huge numbers of terminal based apps. I'm finally happy with my system again. What I realized is that I specifically don't want a Mac-like/Windows-like/shinkwrapped experience. I want choice and freedom, because what I like is not necessarily what the masses (or Mark Shuttleworth or Redhat or Gnome developers) want.
I kind of picked on your post because even though it is kind of negative, I think there are quite a lot of people who think the same way. It's a valid opinion, but a bit unfortunate. The advantage of a (dare I say Gnu/) Linux system or a BSD system is the freedom from being told how you are going to use your computer. It's not having to put up with some stupid design decision just because it was pushed by a popular company and now the masses are used to it. It the ability to explore, experiment and create with absolutely no boundaries.
It is popular enough and gives me more of everything I want than OSes that are more visible to the masses.
You're right, freedom of choice is a big central benefit of Linux. Perhaps, ultimately because everything is modular due to the disconnected-distributed nature of development.
But, giving general users Xmonad and a terminal isn't going to encourage more people to use Linux. Consequently, you land-up building applications that general users want and trying to make the environment more accessible to them.
Ah, but you might say that "more users" isn't an important goal for you [1].
But, the challenge is that below a certain level of users the hardware and software ecosystem isn't incentivised to make things "work with" Linux. If you have 5% of the PC user-base then Intel cares that WIFI chips work, Barclays cares that you can login to their web bank, etc [2]. So even if you don't want Linux to be 50%, you probably do want it to be an important platform.
I don't really buy into the idea that Linux can't be both mainstream and for expert users. The "general users" easy environments and the expert-user xmonad user environments can both co-exist. First, because the Linux distributions are an easy way for users to self-segment - particular types of users are attracted to different distributions. The slight downside of this being that we get tribal wars over distros'. And, really the differentiation between distros is mostly their default choices - you can run Xmonad on Ubuntu (I run i3 for example) and I'm sure you can run KDE on Arch. It's pretty much the same software underneath.
[1] And actually one of the things I dislike is when people say "the Community wants X" which is totally bogus because a lot of people have different goals, there is no "one" community.
[2] You might recall the 90's/early 00's where there was lots of Web tech that made sites not work where Linux was the browser such as e.g. ActiveX.
A hundred times this. Same setup for me, except that i'm considering
moving to Stump WM or Guile-WM as a result of heavily drinking the
Lisp / Libre koolaid. Let people pry my Emacs and tiling window
manager from my cold dead hands! :)
Yeah so i'm not sure, i'm probably saying really stupid stuff now, but i love the way my WM (Xmonad as stated before) is really simple as far as key bindings go: no chords. I like that, because i don't want RSI. I have the impression though that moving more towards an Emacs way of managing my desktops would be laborious, frankly. Maybe i'm just projecting after my disagreeable experience with Ratpoison (only a 2-pane split? Hm.).
It's easy enough to set up StumpWM to support those bindings, if one wishes. Not saying that everyone should be using it, of course! xmonad's a fine WM I'm sure.
As someone who spends most of my time in vim/ screen/ tmux I moved to xmonad recently as well (albeit on debian).
It felt very liberating to suddenly be free of all the Gnome3 / Unity politics, developer fragmentation, and complex desktop systems that still feel inferior to the commercial OS-X/Windows alternatives.
