Linux - never made it to mainstream users. The general public uses OS X.
You should know how many times you use linux or take advantage of Linux each and every day without you even knowing it.Firefox - surpassed in usability and security by Safari and Chrome. Apple's new web services don't even support Firefox anymore.
You mean chrome, the browser built on top of the open-source chromium project?Wordpress and MySQL and Apache - arguably the 3 open source technologies that made it to mainstream users... BUT both are maintained & controlled by corporations (Wordpress and Oracle and Apache). Hence their success. Without these corporations funding the development of those products, they would likely not have taken off.
Sure, but take PostgreSQL, open-source database system I'd venture to say is better in many ways than MySQL (and also many proprietary database systems). No major corporation there. Wordpress -> Drupal (no corporation, less popular but still in the loop). Apache -> Apache is a foundation.VLC - surpassed handily in functionality & features & ease of use by companies like LogMeIn. VLC stopped evolving years ago.
VLC is an open-source media player. LogMeIn is remote control software. You were thinking of VNC I guess? VNC (which is just a system describing server-client interaction to share a screen, basically) includes all features software like LogMeIn or TeamViewer has, but it doesn't have a whole lot of applications that 'present it nicely'. I'll give you that.VLC on the other hand is one of the best media players to roam the earth.
The other technologies you've named: not being used by any mainstream users, unless they were taken over by a corporation (e.g. how Apple used BSD for OS X).
I would LOVE for Bitcoin to go mainstream. I'm rooting for Bitcoin. But unless a for-profit corporation starts controlling & writing the code, it's looking increasingly unlikely that Bitcoin will go mainstream.
You must understand this directly contradicts everything bitcoin stands for?The few developers working on the code can't even agree on a direction for its future! It's taken 5 years to get where we are today, which is... almost no progress. 
The Bitcoin Core client hasn't even reached version 1.0.
The Bitcoin Core client hasn't even reached version 1.0.My good lord.
1. Core developers, and the bitcoin community as a whole, are very rightly conservative when it comes to making decisions about bitcoin's future. If everyone would agree in a heartbeat I'd say something is quite wrong.
2. 5 years is almost no time at all. And to say there's been almost no progress? Are you kidding?
3. The core client will go to version 1.0 when it's good and ready.
On the other hand, for example, look where Apple has come in 5 years with the iPhone: 5 major iOS releases, hundreds of millions of phones sold, rock solid stable OS with no security flaws, an entire worldwide ecosystem built around it.
Yes. Yes. Apple has in 5 (more like 30) years managed to become the crappiest company in the world by building a computer and a phone.
Your definition of mainstream is just wrong.