Linux

Exactly

We go through cycles of this. People get it in their head that "linux is finally ready for mainstrream desktop usage". A lot of people "make the change" and then assess it for themselves.

But there is always this crowd of evangelists that insist on either being ridiculously pedantic or downplaying some of the headaches. And this is a perfect example of... both?

On the Windows side? Most people will never notice that. I think MS have reached the point where they don't even give users a choice after N weeks? You just go down in the middle of watching a naughty video and come up to Cortana turning on all the spyware and telling you to use Edge already.

On "Linux"? It is almost (?) always a series of special commands you provide your package manager and/or upgrade app where it feels like someone is trying to warn you at every step of the way that you WILL destroy your computer. And... it might. I am still not convinced that something didn't get borked with Fedora and plasma and I probably need to just set aside an hour or two to reformat.

The end result is largely the same (depending on what version and what distro). But it very much goes beyond "numbers are scary" and into "But you said I shouldn't run random commands I find on the internet with the word 'sudo' in them. And now I should?" territory.

Personally? I think this is actually an excellent selling point. I hate that Windows does whatever the hell it wants these days. I like that I am making a conscious effort to update my OS. And, while I dislike them in practice, I think "immutable OSes" are the way to make this palatable for the masses.

I’d even say that the amount of distributions or desktop environments is more scary for people.

The same people must be terrified at the super-market

You don't know that it hasn't stopped anyone from using Linux. The reality of large numbers is that with a big enough sample size, any minor frustration (or seemingly minor) has almost certainly stopped someone from using Linux.