>it'll be friendlier for the average person than Linux itself.

I think the myth that Windows is easier needs to die. The builds targeted at Windows users are very easy to use; You would likely go into the Command Prompt as much as you would with Windows, and the "average person" spends more time on their non-windows phone than they do in Windows.

I am a 30+ years Windows developer, who thought he would never move, but who migrated literally a week ago, the migration was surprisingly painless and the new system feels much more friendly, and surprisingly, more stable. I wrote it up on my blog, and was going to follow it up with another post about all the annoyances in my first full week, but they were so petty I didn't bother.

You are still in the honeymoon phase. I see a lot of those blogpost in the last months.

In a few weeks you will bump into something that isn't simple and friendly and you will curse that stupid linux. Something that trivially works in windows and is impossible or insanely hard in linux. That is often the time people go back. Old habits die hard.

But still you are 100% right. Windows is not easier. I know because I went from dos to linux and only occasionally dabbled in windows. And I have exactly the same sort of trouble as soon as I try to do something non trivial in windows. Including bumping into stuff that should be trivial but suddenly is impossible or insanely hard.

For years I have seen people say that windows is easier, while actually windows is just more familiar.

My (completely non computer savvy) parents and in-laws are on ubuntu/mint since 2009 and it was the best decision ever to switch them over. And they don't understand why people say linux is hard either (though my father in law still calls it 'Ubantu Linox' for some reason :-P )

At the start I had a small doubt if I should push them to macOS (OSX at the time) as then apple's fanatical dedication to userfriendlyness paid off. But I decided against it because I didn't feel like paying apple prices for my own hardware and it seemed ill advised to manage their systems while not using it myself. I'm very glad about that because apple has gone downhill immensely since ~2009 (imo)

I agree. One can just install Linux Mint or Fedora or anything and then Linux is just as friendly to use. You got a desktop, you can use your mouse to start up the browser, install applications with a mouse click, and so forth. You could do without opening up the terminal. Functionally the same as using Windows.