It's been fine for the past decade, it's just the trope of "Linux on the desktop" that's slow to die.
As opposed to Windows or OSX where you're just screwed.
There are rough edged in Linux on Desktop but people seem to be completely house-blind* about Windows and OS X. If you spend a lot of time on Linux and go back to Windows or OS X the rough edges in those platforms become immediately obvious.
* If English isn't your first language, house-blind is where you get so used to something being out of place that it becomes part of the decor. e.g. a jumper on the back of a chair that stays there for a week+.
But we have to put this in the context of an elderly lady who is terribly frightened of breaking the computer and always believes it's her fault when software screws up, because the feedback loop of computers is terrible (either absent, or opaque jargon, or marketing lies). That is, my mother.
And keep in mind that I live abroad. Helping her out remotely is a very difficult and slow process - if I lived close by the story would be different. In that context, when it comes to Windows or OSX, my mother has a lot of people who can help her out other than me - my sisters, my father (they're separated but still get along), some of her friends.
Now, my younger sisters are getting into programming (because all professions need it) so maybe I can get them into Linux too - they're definitely capable but the question is whether they consider it worth the investment. But still.
Maybe we're so used to expecting Year of the Linux Desktop to mean Year of the FOSS Linux Desktop that we ignore the successes.
Let’s not be disingenuous. I don’t know about Windows, but macOS has had absolutely wonderful critical failure recovery for a while now: There is the recovery partition, which acts like a mini-macOS and lets you do various things like drop into Terminal.app, use Disk Utility for drive scanning and repair, or do an ‘archive and install’ (extremely useful for the technically challenged) which keeps all your files but sets up a fresh macOS install. If even the recovery partition is borked you get the option of ‘Internet Recovery’, which connects to WiFi and automatically downloads and installs a fresh copy of macOS (with the aforementioned archive function, if an old install is detected).
Compare this to Linux, where you either get dropped into GRUB or a bare shell..
If someone asks me to help for the administration of his Linux machine, I would accept because it is so easy and so little work compared to windows. I think Linux is perfect for the noob who accept to delegate administration.
It's not that I'm not willing to help, but I live abroad. If I lived close by, I would gladly install something like Ubuntu or KDE Neon on her machine (probably Ubuntu though - the mainstream would make it easier for her to find things on her own).
Whenever I'm home I help her with her computer. The whole thing is very educational for me as an interaction designer as well. It often shows how modern interfaces make her feel like she is the dumb one, when honestly it's often the arrogant UI designers who think everyone is on board with modern UX paradigms. Or worse, abuse dark UI patterns for evil purposes.
UI wise I would have helped her switch to one of the distro's ages ago, and I agree that Elementary is a good candidate.
Trying to fix her Lenovo Yoga I had to navigate a forest of dark UI patterns, with pre-installed apps trying to trick me into sharing private data every step of the way.
I really fucking hate this user-hostile attitude that can only be explained by greed. I've "fixed" her computer one more time, but I think the next time I'll let her try a bootable Linux distro, and see if she likes it enough to be willing to give it a try.
I switched from Windows to Ubuntu last December, and it has given me a whole new appreciation for Windows. The polish (things just working well) of recent Windows versions is just amazing, in comparison to Gnome/Ubuntu.
PS. Will stick with Ubuntu though. PPS. Gitlab is an awesome product and company.