Originally Posted by
mixture
Given that the primary application of Linux is in a server environment
Actually, the primary application of Linux is embedded software. I can see four embedded Linux machines from my sofa (my Blu-Ray players, my TV and my Web cam). There are probably more in the house that I'm not aware of.
The 20% of people who use the
various GUIs implemented on top of Linux are then left with a lacklustre support infrastructure.
Android is just a GUI implemented on top of Linux, and the hundreds of millions of Android users seem to do OK with it.
That is, in an essence, why desktop adoption of Linux variants is not widespread and is unlikely to be so for a while yet.
It's not widespread on the desktop because it don't run all those ancient Windows programs people have accumulated over the years, it's not pre-installed on machines you can buy on the high street, and there's a lot of obscure hardware whose manufacturers haven't written drivers. Though, that said, there's now a lot of older hardware for which no modern Windows drivers exist, but are supported on Linux.