We all know the largest desktop software, Windows. That's what you get, Windows. With Linux, there are way more than 31 different flavors, and with most of those now there are multiple desktops available, each. That spells an incomprehensible complexity when it comes to supporting the desktop.

We all would love to see Linux takeover the desktop, but businesses are not going to move to a platform that has no consistency, period.

I know I'll get flamed for daring to speak this, but you asked...

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Is it still common for distros to be set up so that gamepads and joysticks don't work by default, because their device nodes are not user-readable?

I can only speak to the ones I've used, but all my gamepads work out of the box on Debian, Fedora, and Arch.

The only thing that I am missing is a true equivalent to QuickPar for Windows. I end up using it under wine to verify and repair downloaded files from USENET. Some batches of files are deliberately misnamed, and QuickPar can fix those. PyPar2 is great for most uses, but there are things it just cannot do. Aside from that, I've been extremely happy for 10 years using this wonderful OS. Thanks to Steam, there is no real reason not to use Linux, since there is a large database of just about every genre of games, which is why a lot of Windows users shy away from dumping the virus magnet and horrible interface of Windows 10.

A happy Ubuntu MATE user.

I want to second @rockdw on the gaming ecosystem and printing woes. (In my particular case it's really bad - lexmark printer, need i say more? )

But in danger of upsetting the whole linux community, I do want to point to the fact of there being a lack of GUI tools for doing things. There is still this ingrained sense in the linux community of "the command line is great! just type in or copy paste this 40 character command, and change this bit which is particular to your system, and you're good!". Now I will say, linux has made great strides. I use Mint 18.2 as my daily driver, and they have a lot of it sorted. For people like me, who aren't programmers, and want to transition from windows to linux, we don't WANT to use the command line. We want GUI's with buttons and instructions. I know this will rub the community the wrong way, as I know many of you are avid fans of the command line, and I do acknowledge it's flexibility and power. But to just install programs and stuff, people don't want to have to do that. If that was tackled more fully (and to be fair, I think it's already happening), I think you would see a more widespread adoption.

As well as the gaming side of things and printing, here's my list.

Active antivirus - I know you'll tell me linux doesn't get them - but look at it from your average windows user point of view. they're using an unfamiliar system, with no idea how to keep it secure (I'm still not sure my system is secure, took me ages to figure out it had no firewall on), and with no active virus protection, they're going to feel more vulnerable. Also, many a piece of malware will probably run in wine, which most windows users will probably try and get running to run their one must-have program.

GUI Hardware testing and benchmarking tools. I have xsensors running, but it only monitors one of my fans, twice, instead of the two of them. It'll be a configuration somewhere. Is there a "settings", "options", or "control panel" in the app to change things? no. It needs refined, especially if you want to attract the overclocking community, who will then drive mass adoption through recommendations.

Better hard disk repair tools. Again it's the GUI stuff thats lacking. I do believe there are good tools out there for command line, like testdisk, dd etc, just stuff i've heard, but i find if i get a disk with errors or needing defragmented, I'm having to go into a windows virtual machine. So some NTFS and FAT32 GUI tools would go a long way. Windows peeps WILL have old volumes in these formats, and will look for the tools to go with them.

More user friendly Video and photo tools. (yes I hear everyone screaming that there is GIMP and various other tools) My personal view is, GIMP is a bit frightening to the everyday user, who just wants to add some text to their latest meme or summat. GIMP is great when you know how to use it (I don't yet!), but I think there needs to be a simpler option maybe somewhere inbetween MSPAINT and GIMP for the less techy users to use. I'm just throwing the idea out there.

Thats all I can think of just now. I think just generally, if the community could make more stuff GUI-accessible, it would help move more folk across. It took me 6 months to get to a basic level with linux, and I still find i'm frequently in a terminal doing something which can't be done in the GUI. It's a steep learning curve, coming from a windows environment, where you only need the command line for the most difficult of problems. Linux is improving in so many ways, as an office system it's pretty much already there, but for the extra niceties which make it a good home system, there's still some building and tweaking to do.

Anyway, I'm off to put on my flame-suit. I just thought i'd put in the opinion of a ex-wintel user who moved to a debian flavoured linux from Win 7.

(Oh! and I miss my video desktop (dreamscene) that I used to have too.)

1) free/open software to wifi.

2) pdf tools to convert pdf > text 100% editable (only microsoft office does this satisfactorily).

Two main things.

When I do a clean install (of kubuntu), it takes me at least two weeks (clock time) to get everything (at least, everything I can remember) configured the way I want it. There needs to be a better way to preserve customisations. I know I can do an upgrade instead of a clean install, but it takes forever and still leaves things broken.

I also want the equivalent of Dragon Naturally Speaking for true generic voice dictation to text. I think they own all the patents.
It's supposed to work in wine, but I've never had much luck with it.

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Edited due to liquor content.

For me, consistent performance of WiFi seems to be a recurring issue. I've had updates to the system break a properly functioning WiFi card - and others fix it again. Support for some WiFi chipsets is still very poor - for instance on my old Lenovo B590, I use a USB WiFi adapter, because while the internal adapter is recognized, trying to transfer any significant amount of data causes the connection to repeatedly stall. The same box dual boots W10 and the internal adapter works just fine with that.

I've been doing this since Slackware '96. Just don't post here often. Snarky comments from punk twits are another peeve. Now get off my lawn.

Hello, all.
OK, I've got tons of experience on windoz, back to 3.x.
I have used a command line more hours than I care to admit, because now it seems like such a waste.
But every time I sat at a Linux box, I still find there are times that I don't know what to do.
This week I'm recovering from a windoz "file corruption" situation, wherein I had to reinstall windoz; AGAIN!
Of course, it still doesn't work right.
And why, when you reinstall, does it come back different than it was before?
Why can't I save/backup a file that contains a complete system configuration, like earlier versions did?
So, for me, I want some software that will help learn Linux in & out, like I did windoz, before I retired.
That & the options to customize it some, like custom cursors/pointers.
Anyway, I think that's something that would help a lot folks to adapt to Linux, & should facilitate the continued increase in popularity. Just my 2¢.

You can't blame the OS because some manufacturers lock down their devices.. Most AOSP based phones from Google are very open. Maybe not 100%, but very, and the OS itself is indeed.

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For me it's lacking in pretty much every category, which is why it'll never gain mainstream support
- Fit and finish is junk - you end up editing config files and such, end users don't want such BS. Shit, in Gnome 2.X you can't even properly snap your icons to a grid, the horizontal grid lines are super close together so it's difficult to get them in a perfect equidistant grid, it's pathetic and looks extremely unpolished. This crap has existed in OS X and Windows for decades.
- Little driver support (new printer? New web cam? That better be normal UVC or it won't work. That printer better work with CUPS, or again, it won't work. Isn't that the whole reason Stallman started GNU in the first place? Printer drivers? Well fast forward 40 years and they still suck.
- Lack of support for mainstream programs. Everything is always "an alternative", but people don't want alternatives, they want the real deal, and WINE can't fill that void as much as people need.
- Are you a hardware developer? Better get Windows for all them toolchains.

It's fine for me, because most of the time I'm just doing web browsing and what-not, and it's super easy to write software in (comparatively), but for your average soccer mom there's little advantage aside from privacy and freedom, which those people don't care about, as they ask Alexa what the weather is like, before hopping in the mini-van tracked by on-star to go to the kid's soccer game.

The whole reason Stallman started GNU was that he did not want to spend money for a good operating system.

Here's the story I was referencing:
http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch01.html

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Hmm, it is not obvious that this was the flame that started GNU - but thank you, I never took the time to read that book. Might be a good moment to start.