As Torvalds pointed out in 2019, is that while some major hardware vendors do sell Linux PCs – Dell, for example, with Ubuntu – none of them make it easy. There are also great specialist Linux PC vendors, such as System76, Germany’s TUXEDO Computers, and the UK-based Star Labs, but they tend to market to people who are already into Linux, not disgruntled Windows users. No, one big reason why Linux hasn’t taken off is that there are no major PC OEMs strongly backing it. To Torvalds, Chromebooks “are the path toward the desktop.”
Am I? There certainly are windows users that have no idea they want it (just like right click wasn’t a big deal until it was).
There are a lot of forum posts and questions asking Microsoft for it.
But what about numbers? Honestly I don’t know and probably cant know how many people would be interested. I also don’t know what a threshold of users would be to say, yes this might be important. 10%? over 50%?
What I do know is that just one third party tool for windows has been around since 2003. So 22 years of interest.
I also know that they have had at least 500 downloads a week pretty consistently year over year at source forge, with another estimated 50,000 users that have gotten it from the Microsoft store.
Modern ditto as an extention to the current windows clipboard is on github with 5.7k stars and active.
Seems to me there are a lot of users who like to have clipboards. Maybe microsoft made the right move to put in what I consider basic functionality to their desktop as a large number of users were looking for it.
And that is only Ditto. There are a lot more like CopyQ and 1clipboard.