Fwiw, I used the Nvidia drivers. But the fact that users are presented with a choice and have the opportunity to screw things up sort of shows the misalignment

Fwiw, I used the Nvidia drivers. But the fact that users are presented with a choice and have the opportunity to screw things up sort of shows the misalignment between Linux and the general public. The general public wants and needs a computer they can't screw up, not something endlessly configurable. For most people, if things don't work out of the box, they might as well not work at all. Many people don't even know drivers exist because they've never had to manually install them.