> I must be missing something, like do they have cheat codes to make it usable?

Some of us are in the weird spots where no OS "just works" and will require inordinate amount of setup and adjustments anyway.

I recently did an arch and Ubuntu install for two machines, and spend half a day each to get something mildly viable, and still tweak things from time to time two weeks after. Sheer hardware support was only a third of the pain.

Back in the days macos also took me about the same time to setup the local system , configure input and disable/workaround the silly stuff. Windows is on par IMHO (stuff are sillier, but disabling them takes about the same effort). For any of those I end with a fully working *nix system/subsystem, so the end setup makes very little difference to me.

The huge difference is windows having exotic[0] form factor support turned to 11, where linux will be rougher.

[0] I only care about tablets, I wonder if Bazzite could help, I'll be giving it a try in. few months I think.