Well written and laid out venam.

TBF, I don't expect it to go very far. Maybe moreso for smaller business and industries like start-ups that are more siloed. But, for larger corporations, there is just too much to overcome, and with the amount of legacy applications, and employees for that matter, that exist, it would be near impossible. And as you mentioned, the lack of hardware support is also a major factor. A larger effort is required to ensure all hardware is supported. Its useless to engage in convincing companies or industries to adopt a new platform, when the hardware they use will not be supported.

For sure, like you suggest, the monetary value of switching to a Unix/Linux platform would be impactful, but at what cost?

For large businesses and industries, the key is virtualization with thin clients. Hardware aside, giving everyone a U/L device, which connects to DAAS server, running U/L with virtualization for the legacy applications. User training would be required for the new U/L desktop look and feel for the users, but in the end, its simply a file manager, office program, text editor, and an office communication tool. A problem here is compatibilty outside of that particular setting. Will a Visio diagram open properly in LO Draw? What do I use for Project?

Moving to the cloud will also benefit the adoption of U/L, putting less emphasis on the desktop, quietly moving users back to a thin client.

I work for a large insurance company. We are a Microsoft shop with many internal legacy applications. We also have excelled in staying current, currently moving to Office365. We would be the perfect experiment for the scenario I laid out above with DAAS sessions and virtualization. User adoption may be more challenging though.

Users are a big hurdle to overcome. You mention the majority of the population for which U/L appeals. For the regular user, stuff just needs to work. They are not interested in figuring anything out. If U/L cannot get to that point, the push for broader adoption in the everyday user market will fail.

We are definitely heading in the right direction, but there requires a more unified, structured, less disparate push. As you said, fragmented.