It's much easier to diagnose + make changes to remedy the problem on Linux (if you know your way around).
Hell, even if you don't: the majority of the system (barring systemd) is fairly transparent, and you can readily find documentation/articles/blogs to better help you understand the problem -- and even fix it. Contrast this to Windows: I have no fucking clue how all the moving pieces come together. I just know that I can fuss about deep in settings/group policy/on the command line and roll the dice to see if any improvements are found.
Granted, most of the time it is the same for Linux, but it's much easier to simply SSH in, muck about, and so on, than it is to use TeamViewer (or go through the logistics headache of actually getting in front of the machine in question).
Ok, lets say I have a Linux install when desktop is flickering and blinking rapidly and all text labels are either not visible or only every second letter is visible but flickering when mouse over. You are in an SSH which is working fine. Now what? :)
PS: real case from a few months ago on Fedora.
PPS: oh, and guess what advice I got from the "helpful" widely advertised Linux community? "You have picked a bad distro and DE combo" (c) and "You have incorrect hw env for these distro and DE, why didn't you pick ubuntu/mate?" (c)
Ha! At one time I cursed those who threw this at me; now I know better, and throw it at others!
All joking aside, I really dislike Fedora and Gnome. It does have a lot of problems.
But, onto your problem: I would start at looking at the xserver logs, and ask about any recently changed settings/configs/options or updates/rollbacks. The logs are usually fairly good at telling you if something is !!!WRONG!!!.
Those are usually the most likely culprits, if the DE was working fine until all of a sudden it didn't anymore.
If it's a fresh install and right-off-the-bat it's buggy, then it's probably a HW issue (or the distro is terribad).
I would try xforwarding, and other built-in remote desktop options, to see if I could tinker around and get real-time feedback on how the display was looking.
On the other hand, if it's Wayland: I must yield, bow my head, wish you well, and withdraw from such an exercise.
"Okay, let's say I got a free car and it had a relatively obscure problem, and all they told me was to go get another free car instead of providing me perfect support exactly as I demanded, for free!"
The only problems I ever had with Linux over last two decades were exclusively "obscure problems". But there were a lot of them and they are always different and very entertaining. Basically it all boils down to the two factors working simultaneously - 1) bad QA process, and 2) extreme fragmentation of literally everything on every level, increasing test coverage beyond possible.
For me Linux will probably never be "home ready" and will stay on servers and embeds where it is perfect and amazing.
Good thing the actual practice disagrees with you.
Dude, I do this. I literally onboard a good amount of friends and family to Linux. Also occasionally help out Mac people as well. Even now, I hear from the Apple people more.
I don't know why you want this to not be true, but, sorry, it just is. Once set up, Linux is MUCH MORE SOLID, much more "set it and forget it" than Windows or Macs. I'd agree that, say, 5 years ago, the set-up was harder. But that's no longer even an issue. I install Xubuntu on the thing, tell them their password, tell them to go ahead and click yes when it's update time and I just don't hear from them all that much ever again.
You used the phrase "5 years ago" and in some other comment I read "few years ago" and I just want to add, well, "add" a few more years ontop of that. I switched away from windows in 2017 and the experience was already very good.
Another switch in 2019 (Unity->KDE) I can't tell if it got even easier, because I was not as much of a noob anymore than 2 years ago, naturally.
It's almost impossible for someone who is computer illiterate to break a Linux install. Every problem I've dealt with on others' Linux desktops was solved with a reboot.
Linus isn't computer illiterate, a computer illiterate person doesn't decide one day to replace their OS nor bruteforces through several warning messages a command-line based administration tool is telling them because they were trained from a different OS over many years to completely ignore warning messages.
If anything the most likely person to have issues and break Linux is the kind of person Linus is: an experienced Windows power user.
That is EXACTLY what a regular person does with computers. Linux crowd completely missed the point of Linus video - he is perfectly capable working with Linux and fixing issues. But in the videos he was role-playing a regular switcher user, that was the whole point of the video.
I think you have a very skewed view towards what regular people do with their computers. What Linus "role played" (which i don't believe he did, he genuinely borked his system) is a power user which is a very tiny percentage of PC users.
The vast majority of people use their PCs like (overly complex) tools while having an at-best superficial understanding of concepts like what files and folders are. By the moment someone realizes something like a folder being nothing more than a file with a list of other files (instead of something handwavy magical that groups files together), they're already above the 0.1% of the PC using population.
99% of everything a regular person does on a computer is done through a web browser these days, or they might use Zoom, Teams, Slack etc, too. Chromebooks suit regular people's computer needs very well, which is why I say that modern desktop Linux would suit them, too. Linux can provide a very stable and fast base upon which web browsers and Zoom etc can run, like ChromeOS.
