I don’t think Linux Bros will ever find a way to appeal to women newcomers. I think it will take a company that can afford to hire UI/UX designers, marketing people, etc.

But, that’s hard because there’s a chicken / egg situation. Selling a Linux-based computer to the general public is going to be very difficult because of the network effects around Mac and Windows machines. Everyone else uses them and so there are people you can ask for help, there are software vendors who make stuff for the platform (also with nice UIs meant for normal people). I can only see someone spending money to make a mass-market friendly Linux in some limited circumstances.

One situation where a company might make a truly user-friendly Linux distribution is if a company like Valve decided to make a game console. They already have the Steam Deck which is doing really well, but nobody’s going to be doing their taxes on a Steam Deck (although they could). But, if they made a desktop-replacement game console that could both play games and also act as a normal home PC, they could afford to spend the money needed to sand the rough edges off the experience.

Another situation might be if a big country mandated Linux for something, either for government computers or for kids in schools. They’d probably have to have a support contract for that, and whoever was supporting those systems would want them to be as user-friendly as possible so they didn’t have to deal with as many support issues. So, if say Brazil mandated that all government employees switch to Linux, that could result in some company making a Linux desktop experience that was comparable to Windows.