I have been Reddit user for years, because I found the technical communities there that I liked. Since a couple of weeks I am using Lemmy and didn’t look back. Yes we need more people in the communities, but I already like the content I am able to find here. Reddit is more massive, but there is a lot more thrash there as well. I would like to see projects like LineageOS, Pine etc. moving their presence here.
I have 2 Debian GNU/Linux laptops for me and my family plus our Homeserver. Everything we need for school and private usage is working fine. So for my Linux @ Desktop is here now. Compared to 10 yrs ago when I was the only one, the desktop has come a long way. So I do not get this discussion anymore. If you are talking of GNU/Linux Desktop in major companies as the OS for the masses than I agree. But this is then not a technical but commercial problem.
The good part of Android is it’s use of Linux kernel. Pulling a new kernel made by Google and making a new FLOSS shell upon it makes me wonder what is the point if that? We need a GNU/Linux Distro for our phones which has nothing to the with Google, not some hybrid which in part depends on Google again.
I was a Gnome 2 user back in the day and then used KDE for a while. After some Linux-Desktop-Pause I installed Mint and used Cinnamon for a couple of yrs, so I’ve tested thru the bank. As I switched back to my beloved Debian I tried out the Gnome 3 UI in Buster for the first time. I find the Gnome 3 UI actually refreshing and different. I figured out that I was, after yrs of Linux usage, still trying to think of Linux Desktop in a way that it should be “Windows-like” in appearance. No need for that! People over at Gnome are trying new stuff and this is good! Cinnamon is a great DE, but Gnome 3 doesn’t deserve the bashing it gets.
Which ROM are you using? The only one where microG worked for me was LineageOs with microG, so where microG was baked in. I tried numerus times to get the microg installed with a rooted LOS and finally gave up. I am using my phone since 2 yrs now without Google or microG, so plain LineageOS. All the apps I need work just fine but I use only F-Droid apps with Signal taken directly from theit website.