I think you have a very skewed view towards what regular people do with their computers. What Linus "role played" (which i don't believe he did, he genuinely borked his system) is a power user which is a very tiny percentage of PC users.

The vast majority of people use their PCs like (overly complex) tools while having an at-best superficial understanding of concepts like what files and folders are. By the moment someone realizes something like a folder being nothing more than a file with a list of other files (instead of something handwavy magical that groups files together), they're already above the 0.1% of the PC using population.

99% of everything a regular person does on a computer is done through a web browser these days, or they might use Zoom, Teams, Slack etc, too. Chromebooks suit regular people's computer needs very well, which is why I say that modern desktop Linux would suit them, too. Linux can provide a very stable and fast base upon which web browsers and Zoom etc can run, like ChromeOS.