Lemmy and jerboa are extremely polished compared to a lot of the free software I've used, albeit a lot less complex. FreeCAD is one that comes to mind whose UI and interaction actively fights you just to do simple things

It's a little different, because people tend to get pissed because of the context of their routines. If I am trying to do work for school or for a corp, I'm going to be extra irritated when my software fails and I have to relearn something on top of doing work I already don't want to do.

Lemmy is just for fun. I think people might be more forgiving.

I don’t think that’s going to be the case.

The fediverse instances are just lacking a few things here and there to be Twitter/Reddit clones.

Most open source software sans few exceptions like Blender are like 15 years behind the curve in terms of features, workflows, and design.

I have used LibreCalc for years, and I always grumble about how I wish it worked the same as excel. Then back in 2018 at my old job I had to purchase 3 licenses for MS Office and due to my boss’ inability to reply to my emails were purchased under my personal email address (I did not yet have a work email). When I lost that job in 2020 I decided to install excel on my personal laptop. After using it for a few hours I uninitiated Ava went back to libre, which is either better or I am just better at using than excel.

It's not just that: it is made worse by the fact that, being "free", resources are limited. For example, Lemmy.world has been experiencing several hiccups and it's bloody slow at the moment. I get it, it runs on small servers. But the QoS is bad nevertheless; how can you expect the average Joe coming from Reddit to stay here?

And for some reason, mainstream media seems to discourage people from FOSS projects. Just look at the coverage on Lemmy.

"It's clearly not ready yet."

Why? We don't know. It's just not.

Meanwhile I've been messing around with Linux the past week and it got me installing decentralized apps on my android lol.