I spent a whole afternoon+evening reading before recommending my brother a laptop that is a) available where he happened to be and b) would probably just work f

I spent a whole afternoon+evening reading before recommending my brother a laptop that is a) available where he happened to be and b) would probably just work fine with Linux. The article discusses several points that would substantially improve Linux. And it addresses your concerns several times, like here: "There's a great chance that you, as a user, won't ever encounter any of them (if you have the right hardware, never mess with your system and use quite a limited set of software from your distro exclusively)." Ignoring criticism and possibilities of how to improve Linux ("cause it works for me already") doesn't do any good. IMHO the article is a great write-up that could help to improve these issues in the long run.