I’ve thought about this somewhat, for a long time now. Here are my thoughts:
As you probably know, the big giant rich tech corporations who can afford to create exotic hardware of their own imagining, then also afford to develop software for it gain a huge advantage, called the “first mover advantage”.
I suggest you think over the “first mover advantage” more, and put it on the center of the table, in this discussion, about what actually could really propel Linux into being a flagship-something-or-other in the world, not just a late-arriving-to-the-party attempt at a big piece of the market pie in the computer world.
Apple is big into having a first mover advantage. And they are the richest corporation on planet Earth. Google too can afford to develop it’s own hardware (Chromebook, Android Pixel phones, etc.), then the software as well (ChromeOS, Android, and all the tightly-bundled Android apps like the Google Play Store, Chrome browser, Youtube, etc). Alphabet/Google is number 4 on that list. So I say “first mover advantage” really, really matters in the computer world.
Ever wonder why the Windows dominance on the desktop is so hard for the Linux world to overtake (despite the technical superiority of Linux in so many ways)? Because Microsoft had the first mover advantage, when it came to the cheap desktop computer market (as in, Windows PC’s didn’t cost tens of thousands of dollars, like the UNIX workstations they overtook, plus they were considerably cheaper than Apple computers).
Do we see any successful examples of this sort of “first mover advantage” in the Linux world? I can think of one (albeit a much smaller example): the Raspberry Pi, with it’s ground-breaking GPIO pins being really, really cheap (and now really easy to develop for as well, with Python’s highly convenient GPIO-specific libraries, called “GPIO Zero”).
GPIO PCI cards were relatively expensive before the Raspberry Pi ever came along. So for the Raspberry Pi to make GPIO cheap for the masses is a little bit akin to Microsoft making a much, much more affordable home PC.