Linux

This sounds like an Ubuntu problem, sadly. Ubuntu is, in my experience, a mess of a distribution. Debian works almost flawlessly and I think you'll have less issues with a properly run distro.

Try OpenSUSE, GUI for software, system, settings etc. And boot to previous snapshots if you break something

For most people computers are just the same as cars. People want a car that will drive them from place to place, are easy to refuel, easy to operate, and can be taken to an expert for anything difficult or that requires specialized knowledge. Same for computers. Most people want a computer to navigate the web, install the apps they are used to and that their friends use, is easy to operate, and can be taken to an expert for any involved work.

Even the friendliest of Linux distro don't check all those boxes. You cant get ready support from a repair shop, many of the apps are different or function differently, and it doesn't receive all the same love and attention from major third party developers as Windows does.

Most people could learn to use Linux; it's not that hard. Most people could learn to change their own oil. But for most people, it's not worth it. For most people it's not the journey, it's the destination and cars and computers are just tools to get there.

It is hard to adapt Windows habits to Linux for some cases. E.g. you sometimes use Adobe Photocrap for editing photos. Reasonable that ppl want to use what they know, so they will try to use it with WINE and obviously will fail. „Linux sucks, it cant run the properitary shit subscription software, going back to Windows!“ if someone really depends on such software then yes stay the fuck with Windows. For most other tasks there is a solution available. And for the fear of terminal: I bet most users never ever have to see or use it once since there are GUI tools available for such crucial tasks like updating. Mint does a great job in terms of windows like experience for beginners but also is a full fledged GNU/Linux distro. But yeah if you want to change to Linux it is not just the desktop that changes, it is a whole philosophy that opens up a new world if you are curious.

I'll challenge your point with an analogous question:

Why can't everybody speak French?

There are a lot of factors I think.

Some are pretty legitimate, like the lack of Adobe or Autodesk support on Linux, which means a lot of people just 100% cannot participate in their industry using Linux. It's borderline illegal to use Linux if you're a mechanical or civil engineer; Solidworks and MATLAB are pretty much regulatory requirements; you'd probably lose your engineering license if you turned in a drawing made in FreeCAD. In the art space, tell a publishers you drew something in Inkscape and watch their personality leak out their ears. Everyone hates Adobe, but glory to Adobe.

There are also legitimate culture shocks; there's this LTT video where they had iJustine on, and Linus and Justine swapped platforms, he on a Mac, she on a PC, and they were given basic tasks like "install Slack. Take a screenshot. Paste that screenshot in a Word Processing document. Save it as a PDF. Send that PDF to James in a Slack message. Uninstall Slack." Justine immediately started looking around the back of the monitor for USB ports, rapidly found that a fresh install of vanilla Windows doesn't (or didn't at the time) come with a word processor that could save documents as a PDF, Linus immediately went to the web browser instead of the app store...They did similar stunts with their Linux challenge later on, though I'd kinda argue about the tasks they were set to do (such as "sign" a document, which Linus started to do cryptologically but didn't have any keys enrolled because who the fuck does, and Luke just...copy/pasted an image of his handwriting?) But anyway. Linux is different than Windows to use, and even a VERY windows-like DE like Cinnamon is going to have differences that will feel foreign. I remember tripping over "shortcuts" being "links or launchers depending on what you want to do."

There's also the fact that Microsoft has done a world class job at making the average normie hate and fear the command line interface. Because universally, when you see a cmd prompt appear in Windows, it is a bad thing. That hate gets transferred to Linux, where we do routinely use the terminal because while it can be a little arcane, with a little bit of learning you can do some powerful stuff. But, because people have been so conditioned to hate the CLI by Microsoft, you get exchanges like this:

"Hey I'm trying out Pop!_OS because you nerds keep saying it's good, and my laptop can connect to the internet with ethernet but not Wi-Fi, what's up with that?" "Well let's see, could you open a terminal and type sudo lshw -C network, and then copy-paste what it says here for me to look at?" "NO!!!11!! NEVAR!!!! How DARE you suggest I use a computer by doing anything other than pointing at little pictures?! The indignity! It's current year!!"

Finally, before I hit the character limit for this post, there's just a reputation around Linux. I've had this happen more than once, someone will ask to use my computer to look something up on the internet. "Sure." They find the Firefox icon on the quicklaunch bar just fine, it pops open, they're doing fine, then they notice the color scheme and icons are a little different and they ask "uhh, what version of Windows is this?" And I say "It's Linux Mint." And they lift their hands off the keyboard with the same gesture as if I just told them my cute furry pet in their lap is actually a tarantula. They have it in their head that Linux is deliberately hard to use because it's for computer nerds--they think all Linux is Suckless--and because they're not computer nerds, they can't use Linux. So the second they know it's Linux, they "can't" use it.

Because I like to play videogames.

That's it. That's all that keeps me back. I can't play Destiny 2 on linux and I'm an addict with a need.

I put Linux Mint on my grandmothers old computer because the hardware was preventing it from upgrading from Windows 7 without massive slowdown. Back when she was using windows (albeit windows 7) she would call me every week with a new issue. Since installing mint she very rarely has issues and whatever issues she does run into can usually be solved very easily over the phone. I would say that Linux is what you make it. If you want to copy and paste commands from sketchy guides, things are going to break. But if you just use it like my grandmother does, browsing the web and writing emails, nothing can really go wrong

Simple tasks can take you way more time than needed. For example, I have an old laptop under Bunsenlabs (based on Debian with Openbox). The other day, I wanted to connect a secondary monitor. I wasn't expected the nightmare I had to setup this thing. The layout was totally off with a dead space between the two screens where the cursor disappeared and ArandR was very rough to use. I ended up editing txt file if I remember correctly.

I absolutely love Linux but this kind of thing happen quite regularly to be honest.

Most of the time the frustrating thing is it's users. If you look for help about something that is obviously badly designed somehow... You get gatekeeping or "you're using it wrong" responses.

Because clicking a button, finding out it works sometimes but not for you, then the top 3 google links might have a solution to parts of your problem, and you'll have to type in commands to run stuff you probably ran less than 20 times in your entire lifetime, kinda sucks. Even if you try to learn what actually went on, you'd need to do mental gymnastics.

Having multiple buttons to click and have what you want done almost all the time is much easier in comparison.

Source: was once a beginner, although it does get easier.

Because people like to do stuff using a graphical UI but since that varies drastically from one distro to another all the instructions and support is reliant on doing stuff from the command line. That almost was solved by Ubuntu becoming ubiquitous but then they lost the plot.

While this isn't the only reason, I think part of it is that linux, windows and osx are good at different things. If you move from windows and try to install your favorite windows programs, you're probably going to have an experience that's worse than the windows one. If you move from linux to windows the experience is much worse in that regard. To really see the value of linux you have to get used to having e.g. a tiling window manager or a package manager (tbf, chocolatey on windows is ok). But when you're just getting into it, linux just feels weird and convoluted in comparison.

It's not frustrating if someone starts with linux without using windows once.

Linux gives you freedom.

Freedom lets you break stuff.

If, like Windows or MacOSyou just use it as intended by official support, it should be fine. If you start just adding everything and anything from anyone you're gonna break stuff.

Other stuff is made to be idiot proof, Linux is not.

Well, why should the average end-user use Linux, actually? If your answer is privacy, taking control back or something in that general line, you're essentially advocating for a technological solution on the individual level as a solution to what essentially are and always have been political and ideological problems. Expecting that to work out is wishful thinking at best. I have growing suspicions, though, that it's more like a different ideological layer, and in that regard quite akin to making the climate catastrophe about choices of individual consumers (of which they often have very few, actually).

I've been using Linux for so long that it's hard for me to give an approximation of what a new user might find challenging, but I think that something important to remember is that computers are hard. I've spent my entire life studying computers and I'm still learning every day.

Most people grew up with Windows and learned how to use it over the years, but remember that it took years, and most of them still aren't very good at it. Linux requires different knowledge than Windows, but it doesn't inherently mean that it's harder. If everyone grew up using Linux we wouldn't hear about "how hard Linux is" but instead about "how hard Windows is".

At least when something is broken in Linux, it probably has a cause (usually the user) and solution, and a way to debug what happened. When something breaks in Windows you've got about 3 things you can try before the solution is to reinstall.

As for solutions, I don't know if there's a certified pathway into Linux - I think installing something like Linux Mint and just using it like a computer would go a long way towards getting you comfortable with how Linux works without forcing you to study. Once you're comfortable using the GUI, you can take a peek behind the scenes at your leisure - there is documentation everywhere for everything on Linux.

You are doing something wrong. I stopped distrohopping ~13 years ago and never had to reinstall OS after that. If I get error messages, they are helpful enough to figure out the root of the problem (unlike that in Windows, where everything under the hood is hidden from user). For me Windows and macOS are frustrating, not Linux.

Maybe Linux is not good enough for you, maybe you are not good enough for Linux. Anyway, don't constrain yourself, use software that you are comfortable with.

Some things just don't work properly on Linux without doing a lot of tinkering, while on Windows doing the same particular thing works effortlessly. For example, if you want to have an overlay that shows performance stats such as FPS, CPU Temp, CPU Utilization,etc..., while playing a video game, on Windows you can just run MSI Afterburner, simple as that. On Linux, there this tool called Mangohud, while it's a great tool, it doesn't come with a GUI (of course it doesn't, many Linux developers are GUI-phobic for some reason.) So, you either have to do a lot of tinkering with configuration files to get it work and then run it from the terminal, or you use another program called GOverlay, which is a graphical program that utilizes Mangohud among other tools. But guess what? It's broken at the moment, the thing just outright refuses to work properly, so you're stuck with using configuring Mangohud on your own! This is just one example of the many things that are frustrating on Linux but are otherwise convenient on Windows.

You don't choose Linux. Linux choose you. That being said

It's not that hard actually but you need a lot of free time and motivation to keep learning. When I was a student I was deep on Archlinux + DWM / AwesomeWM + lots of console applications now that I am a functional working men I just stick to a stable distro (Currently Debian Testing) I think the secret is have good hardware compatibility and if you want to try some weird configuration just use a VM first or just use a immutable distro.

It requires active user participation. Windows, Mac, iOS and Android will all "work" even if you have no idea what you are doing and no plans to to learn. Just keep running the apps or downloading .exes from cnet.

You can stumble your way through Linux as well but it's a lot less forgiving. If something doesn't work immediately it's up to the user to search the relevant keywords and see if there is a is a fix. That can be frustrating if you aren't so great with a search engine, you don't know what the relevant terms are or you don't know how to implement a fix that is not for your exact setup.

I have the exact opposite problem. Windows is an unstable bloated mess I don't understand. Linux just works.

I use a Mac for work, and it's alright, but it's got it's janky parts (key bindings, and being forced to drag and drop things for instance)