Because even with the low bar set by windows, desktop linux is genuinely less usable. If you need anything outside of a browser and encounter a problem you need substantially more understanding of how the OS works get it fixed, not to mention many common use-cases are either not supported or have an inferior less stable version on linux.
For common problems in windows you can find a current guide with pictures in seconds, on linux you are more likely to find a slightly out of date forum. And thats ignoring the complexities of different desktop environments and hardware compatibility.
> For common problems in windows you can find a current guide with pictures in seconds, on linux you are more likely to find a slightly out of date forum. And thats ignoring the complexities of different desktop environments and hardware compatibility.
This actually isn't my experience. It's possible that I only ever have had less common problems on windows, but invariably whenever I've looked something up for that, I've usually found terrible windows support forums with incorrect information and usually no correct solution at all.
For linux, and again I'd consider myself a power user so am familiar with most things, I usually find the information easily and it's quite straightforward. I believe part of this is due to the more technical nature of linux users, and due to there being active stack overflow resources e.t.c. which is far better than windows support forums (both in quality of questions and answers).
Obviously this is a very opinion based position, but I find the opposite to what you've asserted.
It’s not bias, it’s just how it is. If it’s not something bleepingcomputer or tenforums has covered, it’s a nightmare to find an answer for Windows problems. The difference is that most people are scared of the CLI, so they think Linux is harder because of that. When, in actuality, it saves you several seconds of clicking, and gives you far better error reporting.
Windows is a fucking joke of an OS, and that’s why nearly no one defends it on its merits. It’s always defended on the stance of compatibility because of things like O365 and Adobe products. It has nothing to do with the quality of Windows as a platform because as a platform, it’s a pile of shit, and everyone knows it. We’re just forced to deal with it if we want to game, edit photos and music, etc., without a ton of config changes and other hassles.
Command line and config files are really not a great way to learn a system, once you know what you are doing its faster, but arranging the actions you can take in space with something that represents the current state of the system is by far superior for anything new. There are bad GUIs but fundamentally I believe a system where you can see what is going on will always be easier to learn.
M$ forgot whats actually good about their OS, its been slowly metastasizing, but even so I dont think desktop linux is the answer. There are some real advantages to the windows paradigm, the idea that the program and the window are the same thing is important; the application should always show what its doing and what you can do. Settings are selected from all the possible options (you dont need to know whats available in advance)
I have always found that personally as I become more capable I get stranger and more obscure problems with computers, but never less problems. The edge cases and weirdness that you can get help with in an active forum is greater for sure.
When talking about common problems, I mean truly common, the things an average high-school student runs into like joining an online classroom or editing a document (or even playing a game!). These things do fail on linux, and without being a power user that knows where to start and some keywords to search getting past square one is not so easy.
The only data point I have, is my non-technical partner, who has had far fewer issues since moving to linux than on windows. It's a data point of n=1, and I'm not sure if I'd recommend it for everyone.
I was more than happy to recommend it for her since I know if there is any issue she has, I'll be able to solve it quickly and easily. The fact is though after throwing a standard ubuntu system on the machine I don't think she's had any issues past the first week or two of figuring out where the settings were, and what program does what.
There might have been the odd libre office question maybe?
The fact is, I'm pretty much the family tech support. My linux "support burden" is far lower than my windows "support burden" was when she used that (both in frequency, and for me, complexity). I still get a fair few macOS or iphone questions from my parents from time to time, but almost never things about linux.
Video editing, photo editing, connecting a Focusrite to the machine. Connecting a midi keyboard. Connecting a remote printer. Connecting a Bluetooth headset. Getting usable battery life. Installing software that allegedly supports Linux. All this and more are issues I've had with my Linux installations. Yeah I could have used a different distro, and yes many of these u could solve. But it sure was a pain learning it all.
Trying to disable mouse acceleration for touchpads when running Ubuntu 20.04 (and derivatives) made me lose more than 6 hours of my life.
The culprit was libinput, which, for some reason, ignored the "flat" acceleration profile for touchpads. It was eventually fixed, but the fix didn't hit an LTS version of Ubuntu until this year.
You plug in your phone, indicate file transfer is ok (on your phone itself, which I assume must be the same for windows) and nautilus gives you the option to browse it.
nautilus, nemo, etc support MTP and have done so for many years. You just plug your phone in and navigate to it in your file manager, which is the same thing you'd do on Windows.
For common problems in windows you can find a current guide with pictures in seconds, on linux you are more likely to find a slightly out of date forum. And thats ignoring the complexities of different desktop environments and hardware compatibility.