I suspect that the issue hindering adoption is GNU and other user land projects, not the Linux kernel. Plenty of people use devices that pair a Linux kernel with an easy to use UI and popular software (see Android and Chromebook).

Many people would happily switch to a Linux based OS that had the exact same GUI as their current OS and ran the exact same software. That is not a realistic requirement in practice.

It is possible that Linux would have more adoption if they invested more money into having drivers for a wider range of hardware, but having Linux kernel develers write drivers instead of hardware vendors is not a strategy that scales well.

[–] sus@programming.dev 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

realistically, the linux foundation gets all its funding from corporations who have interests in servers, android and embedded. So all the funding goes to those things and not to the linux desktop.