I am not saying that more people using Linux is bad or that people shouldn’t use it (I mean, check my own post history; I am a recent convert myself), but if it reached the kind of saturation that Windows or Apple enjoys, it would bring not liberation but enshittification.
Nor am I trying to be some kind of elitist “the plebs don’t deserrrrrrve it” schlub; hell, I use Linux Mint Cinnamon and have to have a guide to handhold me through all but the most rudimentary, familiar-to-me-as-a-Windows-user tasks.
However.
A bar to entry (even such an ankle-high one as there is now) keeps Linux relatively off the radar of large, moneyed interests that would otherwise descend onto Linux distros and enshittify them in a heartbeat.
In other words, rather than “everyone who uses Linux will then see how bad they’ve had it under Windows and how anti-consumer certain software companies (let’s say Adobe for example) have been treating them!”, the more likely outcome would be “now there is Adobe Photoshop Linux Edition that is exclusive to the paid Adobe Linux distro” or other similar shackles and lockdowns and limitations (for which your credit card is the key), and the alternatives, not having ad money or corporate backing to prop them up, would be left by the wayside as other such enshittified distros/softwares gained users and traction.
Hell, just because a non-enshittified alternative to an enshittified software exists doesn’t mean people will know about or use it. To use an example, Excel is hardly the only way to make a spreadsheet. But it’s the one that is used, taught, known, documented, and widespread. It doesn’t matter that [some other software] is superior in every way if no one knows or cares about it.
Admittedly this is kind of my shower-thought guess and it’s not as if I have sat and thought through this thoroughly, but heck, here we are. Lay it on me.
It’s worth keeping in mind that Linux (and Unix-like) OSs are already the most common server and datacenter OSs by a country mile. At the risk of being the “um aktshually” person here I think you are trying to refer to specifically using Linux as a general desktop OS, specifically for consumers. This is a pretty huge distinction though because all those giant companies are already using Linux in their data centers. Many support desktop use of their applications on Linux, and it’d be pretty difficult to gain any real foothold by limiting use of say Adobe apps to only an Adobe distro. They could perhaps choose to only package for say RHEL to support enterprise users, but then that package will work on Fedora too, and CentOS, etc.
At its core, desktop Linux is already so fractured through various distros that a single one really doesn’t stand a chance at gaining enough foothold to be the Linux desktop OS, especially with SteamOS and Bazzite taking a good chunk of new users away from Ubuntu as an entry point to Linux, and Mint gaining ground as a good windows replacement. Debian and derivatives are likely to be a very sizable chunk of desktop users (in no small part due to Raspbian), but compared to how monolithic Windows or macOS are I don’t think any single distro can meet the needs of enough users to ever really get the market capture needed to be properly enshittified. Sure some will happen (through things like Snap no doubt), but it’s too easy to fork and create a new distro without that for it to become a Windows level problem. Plus Linux can’t be charged for directly due to its license (other aspects on top of the open source pieces can be, which is what RHEL does, but even there IBM has run into a ton of developer pushback with the stupid moves they made with CentOS a couple years back). The lack of real ability to commoditize the entire OS makes me confident desktop Linux won’t ever have the same enshittification issues as say Windows does.