Even if "only" 2.5% of desktops and laptops use it, that is not a small number by any stretch of the imagination -- that's like 30-50 million people. For comparison, ChromeOS has a market share of about 2.4%, and that's with a fairly concerted effort by Google to drive adoption.
Meanwhile, the Stack Overflow Developer Survey showed a massive jump from 25% of respondents using Linux last year to 40% using it this year. Even if you assume some sampling bias, that's still a huge swing.
Then you have major manufacturers like Dell shipping laptops with Ubuntu, Proton and Wine getting better and better at running Windows games and apps, projects like WSL and the Steam Deck giving more people the opportunity to try Linux out, etc.
Even if there are still flaws and barriers to adoption, those barriers are diminishing and momentum is clearly building in Linux's favor. It will only get easier to run Linux going forward.
It probably won't overtake Windows or become a huge competitor (at least, not in the foreseeable future), but I think in the near future it will become more of a "mainstream niche" like OS X was in the 2000s. Most people won't run it, but they'll probably know someone who does and it will be at least conceivable that they could run it themselves.
Google is playing the long game on ChromeOS though, by getting it into schools— those are kids who are going to hit adulthood in 10-15 years with their primary (and maybe even only) computing experiences having been iOS devices and Chromebooks.
Which is all well and good for Google, but that's just not the kind of time horizon that open source projects can work on.
Meanwhile, the Stack Overflow Developer Survey showed a massive jump from 25% of respondents using Linux last year to 40% using it this year. Even if you assume some sampling bias, that's still a huge swing.
Then you have major manufacturers like Dell shipping laptops with Ubuntu, Proton and Wine getting better and better at running Windows games and apps, projects like WSL and the Steam Deck giving more people the opportunity to try Linux out, etc.
Even if there are still flaws and barriers to adoption, those barriers are diminishing and momentum is clearly building in Linux's favor. It will only get easier to run Linux going forward.
It probably won't overtake Windows or become a huge competitor (at least, not in the foreseeable future), but I think in the near future it will become more of a "mainstream niche" like OS X was in the 2000s. Most people won't run it, but they'll probably know someone who does and it will be at least conceivable that they could run it themselves.