As someone who recently switched to PopOS, it's actually very stable and feels like Windows 7. Fast and simple. Nowadays most games and the Microsoft office suite also run in Wine.
Every time someone criticizes the state of Linux desktop as an overall experience being generally troublesome for the average consumer discussions always devolve down to anecdotes that only serve as proof that tech savvy people who are willing to either push through the issues or find alternatives did so, therefore the same experience is valid for those who didn't, making it sound like a "skill issue" and not a "desktop experience issue".
I would argue that, outside of clicking some folders and adding/deleting stuff, the skills required to make ANY desktop experience useful should be as low as possible. Example: I convinced a fellow gamer to give Ubuntu a try, and I helped him with the dual booting process. Then he realized that his framerates feel janky, due to issues with Wayland and vrr. His display had light surfaces flicker while gaming and, while we managed to make Final Fantasy 14 playable, we faced jarring mouse cursor movement when the framerates dipped, which didn't exist on Windows.
While reading this message I'm sure some people will feel an urge to say "oh that's just the monitor that's faulty", "that's just KDE and how it handles mouse movement", and they always miss the point: Just like a teacher doesn't care if a dog ate a homework, and the ISP customer if it was raining, the end user doesn't care if it's Wayland, KDE, Ubuntu or whatever. All they care about was "getting IT done", they couldn't, and now they have to accept a workaround solution or just go back to what they always used fine.
Part of the reason why is that, there's no focused effort towards a small amount of directions, and there's lots of opinion on who can do it better, even the definition of better. Since we're mostly developers, it's akin to working with .NET versus working with nodeJS. The fragmentation is inherent to the system, and the target audience loves it, even at the cost of the end user.
Completely agree, but I think that as Windows becomes worse and worse, there's going to be more push to make Linux usable by an average person. Especially considering the migration of apps from native to web. This is going to take a lot of time though.
I think the biggest difference is that people buy Windows (and Mac OS) preinstalled, but install Linux distros themselves.
Do people experience these issues on a Steam Deck or running Pop OS on System 76 hardware, etc?
The other thing I wonder about is (looking at the problems people are talking about here) whether Windows is any better. Windows can need a lot of fixing.
Since about a year ago I've been using wayland on two systems, 3d/gaming performance is great. That said, afaik VRR support is half-baked on Linux, so I wouldn't count on it for now. Also, if OP used nVidia GPUs then it could be a source of issues since it's a big no no with Wayland for now. People on the bleeding edge have access to new enough drivers that fixes most of these issues, so in time things will stabilize.
