I think the issue is that while Linux is capable of a lot when you can take full advantage of it, each task requires way more knowledge or a good tutorial and no complications.

For me, I love working with Linux and have been doing it on and off for decades, but it doesn't tend to remain my daily because of the extra steps and limitations.

I think if I had a more full working knowledge of Linux and I knew Python or had a stronger grasp of other languages, I'd be a lot more able to fill those gaps. But without that, it there are all these barriers to productivity that aren't there otherwise. Instead of doing the thing I'm trying to do, i end up spending the night messing around with some depreciated program or struggling with a weird use case and it simply requires way more of my time to get there.

Considering that I have a lot more experience with Linux than the average person and still run into this regularly, I'd say it's a big barrier to wider adoption.

Honestly the solution is probably more on the end of getting together to make some of these issues less complicated than on the end of expecting everyone to become a well versed Linux enthusiast. With such a high learning curve, unless you're using it for something it's particularly good at doing easily, you kind of have to want to get into Linux for its own sake in order to learn enough to make it easier to use. And even then, it's a struggle sometimes.

I've been using Linux for so long that it's hard for me to give an approximation of what a new user might find challenging, but I think that something important to remember is that computers are hard. I've spent my entire life studying computers and I'm still learning every day.

Most people grew up with Windows and learned how to use it over the years, but remember that it took years, and most of them still aren't very good at it. Linux requires different knowledge than Windows, but it doesn't inherently mean that it's harder. If everyone grew up using Linux we wouldn't hear about "how hard Linux is" but instead about "how hard Windows is".

At least when something is broken in Linux, it probably has a cause (usually the user) and solution, and a way to debug what happened. When something breaks in Windows you've got about 3 things you can try before the solution is to reinstall.

As for solutions, I don't know if there's a certified pathway into Linux - I think installing something like Linux Mint and just using it like a computer would go a long way towards getting you comfortable with how Linux works without forcing you to study. Once you're comfortable using the GUI, you can take a peek behind the scenes at your leisure - there is documentation everywhere for everything on Linux.

Nearly everyone forgets how hard windows was to learn initially.

I spent the better part of a child hood and the first 10 years of an IT career learning it. Does that sound like a simple or easy system? Conversely I've spent slightly less time but an equal 10 years of an IT career learning and supporting Linux. I've only recently in the last 3 or so years started to feel like I truly grasp Linux and started using it as a daily driver on personal machines.

I now find Windows absolutely horrible to work with. All the nonsense MS foists on it's users. The inflexibility. The weird choices. The licensing nonsense.

The bottom line is not that Linux is harder. It's that Linux is different and different is scary and uncomfortable. Different is hard, not linux. People are lazy and creatures of habit. We like familiar. Few of us actually enjoy the work of learning something new that isn't easy. If we did more of us would probably be pilots or engineers or whatever hard thing to learn you want to choose.

If you're into computers and you still find it hard or constraining keep at it. The Ah, ha! moment is coming. There's a paradigm shift in thinking you'll hit and suddenly you'll get it. When you do you'll find it's magnificent and powerful and freeing.

My first foray into Linux was Mint on an old laptop. Then on my desktop I can't quite remember what I used, but I stumbled across the rolling release versus point release divide in distros. I think I wanted a more up-to-date PHP version at the time, and debian/ubuntu were both slow to update to cutting edge had me jump to Arch, at least for development purposes. That was 2017, gaming on Linux wasn't really great back then.

I ended up dual-booting Arch on my desktop, and for all the supposed complexity, if you can read a manual properly, and work through the guides on the wiki… it actually leaves you with a better understanding of how Linux is put together. So long as you're aware of what commands you're putting in.

If I were to compare it to anything, then it's the same sort of difference between building your PC for yourself (Arch), against getting something custom built (ubuntu) versus getting a prebuilt system (Windows). And you know, since migrating to Arch I haven't actually reinstalled once—people who do that are, and this may be controversial, but they're doing it wrong. If you fuck up majorly, like running rm -rf / then sure, you'll have to.

A tip for using the terminal, when you're trying to discover things, you can use tab completion to speed things up. You don't have to type entire commands, or entire directories/filenames. Of course it won't give you any arguments for a script or program, that is what man <command> is for, or a quick search online.

Only a few weeks ago did I finally scrub Windows from my system, gaming has been relatively painless (with a few odd exceptions) since Proton has really begun to mature. But as it stands, I'm never going back—and if I really need it… I'll look into a virtual machine.

I hope that snaps, flatpaks, AppImages, etc., will make a big difference in terms of adoption and ease of use. As @Millie@lemm.ee said, if complications arise while trying to install or use software, then you're basically screwed unless you have a really good tutorial or deep knowledge. I've been using various Linux distros as daily drivers for the past ~10 years, and in that time, I still haven't figured out why there's such a big emphasis on compiling software. Your average Windows user has probably never even heard of compilation let alone been required to compile software in order to use it. For better or worse, the emphasis in Windows is on shipping binaries that the user can simply double-click to run. And if we want to reduce frustration for new Linux users, we can't expect them to know how to compile software. Snaps, flatpaks, and AppImages definitely move us in the right direction even if there's a lot of internal debate about which of those is best.

It's also nice to see big flagship projects like Gnome finally really taking off in terms of quality. Of course, the Gnome desktop environment won't appeal to everyone aesthetically, and it's generally much more resource-intensive than Cinnamon, KDE, XFCE, LXQt, etc.; but distros like Ubuntu, Fedora, Pop!_OS, etc., look really great and work really well out of the box for most people. Same with Linux Mint. And I personally don't care for KDE, but it's another DE that's pretty solid.

The sky-high barrier to entry was a MAJOR problem for me.

When I was seriously considering installing Linux, the first issue I ran into was the lack of tutorials - or, more accurately, the bewildering array of tutorials. You couldn’t just search the term “Linux tutorial” and expect an answer that was specific enough to your case to actually be useful. There was (and is) a wide variety of distributions, each with their own unique behaviors and requirements.

If you were looking for help with the Windows or Mac OS, all you needed was the OS version number, plus maybe some basic hardware info, and most of the time you were good. With Linux, answering even the simplest question required a focused, concentrated effort, and there was still a decent chance a beginner wouldn’t have enough background knowledge to understand the answer. Generally speaking, beginner-friendly tutorials were often too broad to be useful, and specific tutorials tended to assume knowledge that a beginner didn’t have.

Unless you had someone standing by who was willing to be your Linux Yoda, starting out was very difficult. I didn’t know such a person, so I just gave up.

Granted, this was several years ago, and things may have changed. I’m speaking from my own limited experience.