NixOS has the potential to do really well here. The Nix language has a rich enough type system to generate GUI forms for every field, and there are several projects being worked on that allow editing NixOS options from a GUI. They're still very janky, but it's definitely possible to get to a point where a layperson could operate them without breaking their system.

I'd give my left nut to have a GUI for managing the icons in the GNOME dock. Like, where is the binary for this icon? Can I edit this .desktop file from the right click menu, please? FML.

Desktop Environments are decoupled from the underlying system. It makes switching DEs very easy but integration sucks.

I needed to flush dns on my Ubuntu machine. I googled it found a command for an older version. But of course the underlying stuff changed since then and that command doesn't exist anymore.

The command to flush dns on Windows has been the same for decades. On Linux half the stuff I learn is going to be obsolete in a couple of years and that knowledge can't be carried over to other Distros because they do it differently.

I also had to manually build and install a driver for a very common realtek wifi chipset that is not even new.

All the settings changes should be config files. GUI is dumb Pooh.