I don't think that using microkernel instead monolithic one would change a thing regarding Linux desktop market share. In fact, in most cases it would have no difference at all, except perhaps in device drivers area where potentially easier maintainability would contribute to bit better support from the vendors.
"The problem" of linux desktop actually is not a technical one. It's organizational/economical one. As long as there is no a single and clear industry standard linux distribution, linux desktop won't be a thing, because nobody wants to deal with a vortex of distribution segmentation. Simple as that, but of course, there are a lot of details to unpack in this topic and I won't go through them.
I have no recipe for linux desktop to get better, but IMHO we need at least one or preferable both of these two:
a) All major parent/mainstream distros (debian/ubuntu, RHEL/CentOS/Fedora, Arch and SuSE) should at least agree on using the same packet manager, init system, desktop environment/display server and container tech. That alone would help packaging shit a lot, because at least you could expect some fundamental components to be there and dealing with different versions of expected components is a lot easier than dealing with different components. Same shell, default python version, core tools etc. would help too. That will never happen of course, because it's open source and everyone has to demonstrate it's fucking ego by forking shit and reinventing wheels, which are 0.0005% faster, cause it's cool.
b) Some megacorp should create and push linux-based os with centralized and tightly controlled structure and developing model while at the same time being as much open source friendly as possible. For example, Google buys canonical, merges Ubuntu with Chrome OS, calls it Pixel OS and pushes to be full featured OS to compete with MacOS, perhaps in combination with powerful ARM-based Pixel books as well. This is quite unlikely considering Google long term plan is most likely to drop Linux kernel. Furthermore, it would not be an actual "linux desktop", more like "linux based desktop", but you know, i'd rather take that than virtually nothing we have now (from the market share point of view).
To be honest, I don't see other way, unless everything goes into cloud and we use only browser and browser engines for the userspace (which kind of is already happening). However, we are basically talking thin client in this case, not a desktop as such.
"The problem" of linux desktop actually is not a technical one. It's organizational/economical one. As long as there is no a single and clear industry standard linux distribution, linux desktop won't be a thing, because nobody wants to deal with a vortex of distribution segmentation. Simple as that, but of course, there are a lot of details to unpack in this topic and I won't go through them.
I have no recipe for linux desktop to get better, but IMHO we need at least one or preferable both of these two:
a) All major parent/mainstream distros (debian/ubuntu, RHEL/CentOS/Fedora, Arch and SuSE) should at least agree on using the same packet manager, init system, desktop environment/display server and container tech. That alone would help packaging shit a lot, because at least you could expect some fundamental components to be there and dealing with different versions of expected components is a lot easier than dealing with different components. Same shell, default python version, core tools etc. would help too. That will never happen of course, because it's open source and everyone has to demonstrate it's fucking ego by forking shit and reinventing wheels, which are 0.0005% faster, cause it's cool.
b) Some megacorp should create and push linux-based os with centralized and tightly controlled structure and developing model while at the same time being as much open source friendly as possible. For example, Google buys canonical, merges Ubuntu with Chrome OS, calls it Pixel OS and pushes to be full featured OS to compete with MacOS, perhaps in combination with powerful ARM-based Pixel books as well. This is quite unlikely considering Google long term plan is most likely to drop Linux kernel. Furthermore, it would not be an actual "linux desktop", more like "linux based desktop", but you know, i'd rather take that than virtually nothing we have now (from the market share point of view).
To be honest, I don't see other way, unless everything goes into cloud and we use only browser and browser engines for the userspace (which kind of is already happening). However, we are basically talking thin client in this case, not a desktop as such.
Comment