Odd. What distros have you had such poor experiences with? What sort of things do you use Linux for?

Mint has been tinker-free for me for years as my main desktop. I have had Mac and Windows laptops during that time, as well. But I rarely use them for any of my hobbies.

I use it to actually do stuff so the last thing I want is tinkering getting in the way of that. And it hasn't for years.

Now, to be fair, gaming is another story since not everything works easily.

Anyway, I doubt Mint is the only distro that doesn't require much fiddling with.

Things have come a long, long way since the 90s (I was using Mandrake at that time).

For example, the install process for Fedora and Mint are slicker than for Windows if you ask me.

I mean, my kid has been using Linux as her desktop since she was like 10 and she doesn't seem to have any problems (except ok sure, stupid Nvidia ...we went AMD with her new system). Granted she mostly just surfs and plays Minecraft.

I wouldn't hesitate to set up a non-techie with one of the mainstream, stable distros depending on what they want to use.

I don't think it is the year of the Linux desktop by any stretch but I do think the numbers will trend slightly up over the next five years as steamdeck-alikes get more popular and more progress is made on compatibility and natively written games, and as Windows enshittification continues.