I mean, I would argue that today that some Linux experiences are smoother out of the box experience than windows. I did a highend gaming rig with windows set up for a neighbor who wanted to be able to do a racing sims (chair, wheel, pedals, the whole shebang). I couldn’t believe how difficult it all ended up being. All on the part of windows and what it has become as an OS. Like jaw dropping difficult.
Windows is actively adding friction to their experience, so Linux just needs to do better than that. And the friction points with Linux remaining are frankly, minor and solvable. The issues for me always seem to be WiFi/ Bluetooth/ and audio drivers. The second big friction point is software instillation. I don’t want to jump in on the flatpack drama, but being able to install software and have it ‘just work’ is the other issue with Linux. Oldschool windows got this completely right. You download an exe, double click, press yes a bunch of times, and now you have software that works.
Those two pain points, which I think will be solved in 2-5 years in some version of desktop Linux (and even more likely to be solved with increased adoption), and Linux could easily replace windows as the dominant desktop operating system. Great progress in all of this has been made. We’re very close.
So I’ll swap out ‘frictionless’ for ‘less friction than the competitive equivalent’. It just needs to be a bit better. We’re very close. A couple more years, a bit more adoption, and it wont even be a question. In some cases, the Linux experience is less friction than windows. In a few years, I hope that most Linux experiences will be less friction than windows. Once that’s the case, the whole paradigm shifts.