What happened to Linus was sort of an extreme case. He has a complicated set of hardware and the bug that he ran into that didn't let him install steam shouldn

What happened to Linus was sort of an extreme case. He has a complicated set of hardware and the bug that he ran into that didn't let him install steam shouldn't have been there in the first place. The fact that he tried to force it to do what he wanted was a natural reaction, and apt wasn't lying when it told him it wouldn't work. Just bad luck all around, and evidence of how linux has pitfalls. This coming from someone who has used one distro or another as their daily driver since around 2002, I think. Most people aren't going to run into this. The problem he ran into installing steam was only a problem for a short time, and I'm pretty sure the devs aren't going to allow that one to happen again any time soon. For your average non-power user, a desktop install will go fine, the steam install will go fine, and their favorite games will have a good chance of working properly. Obviously you can live happily in linux since I've been doing it successfully for a couple of decades. Once you get it set up to your liking, it's generally smooth sailing. Depending on your individual circumstances, though, that can be a chore, I admit. I also remember the pains I went through learning DOS and it's quirks, Windows 3.1 and it's quirks, Windows 95 and plug and play, etc. Life in Windows hasn't been a cakewalk either. Things generally work a lot better now, but I shudder thinking about having to download a driver from somewhere, deal with the extra crap they throw in, run through it's installation program, etc. Don't get me started on trying to run something not bought from a company, but downloaded from a website somewhere. Yikes. Or just dealing with how MS breaks their own rules. Click on any non-MS program once, and it takes your click. Click on anything built by MS, and it just gives it focus and you have to click again to get it to do what you wanted to the first time. Windows is user-hostile if you don't walk their walk. Linux is user-friendly if you are open to the idea that a bunch of software built by well-meaning developers that do their own thing might not work as smoothly as something built from the ground up by a corporation. I can't recommend linux to just anyone, even today, but for me dealing with user-hostile problems thrown at me by a corporation is much worse than trying to figure out a workflow that will make these tools built by separate groups work together. Or un-fsck whatever stupid thing I managed to do to myself today by trying to be fancy.