&gt; Consider that the OS that powers all kinds of devices from satellites to embedded devices is Linux, an open-source project where payment isn&#x27;t a top-priority for developers, but merit is!<p>I get that and I don&#x27;t want to denigrate contributors. I&#x27;ve contributed to FOSS of one stripe or another over the years myself.<p>However I&#x27;d probably do a much better job at it if I was paid a decent salary and allowed to work on it full time. And the software would be better for it if I had a team of similar developers, user experience and design people, etc.<p>Being all things to all people is a great way to be nothing particularly amazing at one thing... something a desktop experience needs.<p>&gt; All endeavors are like that, not just software projects. More the user participation, better the product focus and development.<p>It&#x27;s tough! I think that&#x27;s the primary reason for porting games to Linux. It&#x27;d be great if there was more to the gaming world than Windows. However for small studios there&#x27;s no incentive to develop for Linux: there&#x27;s just not a market big enough to sustain a business.<p>How do you break out of that? I dunno. A black swan maybe.<p>&gt; Can you cite a single widely used software that doesn&#x27;t have a FOSS alternative which works on Linux.<p>Wacom drivers. There aren&#x27;t any shipped by Wacom for Linux. The open source ones are a stop-gap and better than nothing but aren&#x27;t as good. Ergo Gimp is a marvelous piece of software but not comparable to Photoshop for professional uses.<p>I&#x27;d add that any alternative that wants to gain traction must provide some benefit over its contemporaries. Software freedom just doesn&#x27;t cut it for more pedestrian uses of computers.<p>I can think of several applications provided by the Omni group which have no real analog in FOSS that I&#x27;m aware of.