People want Linux to act like other operating systems because:
1. They want an easy alternative that doesn’t require extensive relearning should their original OS of choice become unpalatable for some reason
2. Advocates of desktop Linux have endlessly sung praises about how customizable it is and how that flexibility is a core tenet, so why shouldn’t it be able to act identically to Windows or macOS, at least as far as UI goes?
The first is particularly big, because remember that at this point a lot of people have decades of usage of Windows/macOS under their belt, and even if switching to Linux is a practical consideration for them, such users probably aren’t keen on tossing out all their little bits of power user knowledge and productivity boosting tricks and having to start out from almost scratch.
This is something that I always bothered me. I love using middle click to scroll (you middle click, then move your mouse up and down) in Windows, but there isn't any way to do this in Linux. You can enable it in Firefox for Linux but not on the entire OS, and trying to ask people about this just makes people reply with "why would you want to do this if the default is middle click to copy??".
There are ways to sort of mimic this behavior, but none 100% matches how Windows work.
My understanding is that there are also distros that closely match the mac experience.
If you pick up a distro like mainline Ubuntu you might be confronted with potentially confusing new opinions about how desktops should work. I lucked out and tried it back in the Gnome 2 days when it felt like XP.
There’s nothing that replicates macOS unfortunately. Many point to GNOME, but it’s much more like iPadOS than macOS, or to elementaryOS but it only shares some aesthetics with core features like the global menubar or super-based (as opposed to control-based) key shortcuts being entirely absent. For the latter there’s hacks like Kinto[0] but this is the sort of thing that really needs to be part of the DE.
[0]: https://kinto.sh/
Well, a while ago Ubuntu implemented amazon ads in the start menu
I don't really care how many people use Linux, it's been my daily driver for a decade and I don't need other people to use it - I just need them to use compatible file formats or sometimes the same web apps as me which is increasingly a solved problem, for people who really need Adobe CS or something they are not going to be using Linux this decade.
Linux can enjoy great success if it finds a suitable OS market segment -- hello Steam deck and Steam OS? After a few tries Gabe may be on to something.
If it happens it will have nothing to do with competing with Microsoft or Apple on their terms.
In the meantime I don't really give a shit because it's great for me and I use it.
I do think the GPL world in general is missing some kind of amazing positioning opportunity - don't know what exactly or how to fix it but basically most of Big Tech are not liked because they're abusers, and GPLed software is the antidote.
Because for a lot of people the point is to use a free (as in speech) OS. They are fine with how OSX or Windows works, and they want Linux to work the same. They simply want a good, user-friendly free desktop OS.