Not a good alternative for the big middle distribution of computer skills of the computer user base. Web browser only? Great. Highly skilled? Great. Everyone else? It can be a nightmare. Linus' Linux Challenge videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0506yDSgU7M) provide excellent insight into the typical user experience for anyone beyond web browser only requirements and beneath administrator level. If you find yourself saying "what an idiot, how did he not know that "do as I say" would mangle his OS," you're definitively in the highly skilled camp.

Linux UX convention relies on the terminal as a matter of course. Almost everything not in the package manager requires use of the terminal. Even many of the package managed applications require tweaks and configuration via terminal. It's an open secret that package managers are largely inferior to the terminal anyway, in every distribution. The almost universal response to "I am having an issue with the package manager" is "use terminal." Bottom line: terminal is far less user friendly than an object oriented environment, and is often much slower. Until a flavour of Linux exists which never ever, for any reason ever, requires the use of the terminal, Linux will remain in the low single digits in terms of consumer market share. I don't think this will change, because if you ask the average Linux developer what they think of the terminal convention, they love it, and they think users just need to stop sucking so much.