> spending 6 months learning the nomenclature and structure of linux
> become a proper user
Care to elaborate? My parents have been using Ubuntu successfully for over a decade now for "email and youtube". They do not even know what a CLI is. What are you trying to accomplish that does not work out of the box?
Add my 87 year old grandmother to that list. Firefox->email, youtube, kroger, banking etc. These days most users just need access to a web browser via their OS.
That's the thing, linux is great for linux power users and absolute hands off users. Its terrible for people in the middle, and hence why it cannot get the ball rolling towards adoption for 30 year now.
There are tons of tech literate people who know what a problem is, know what the fix is, but do not want to deal with climbing through forum posts and documentation to figure out the correctly structured command to do the actions (and how to unfuck if the command wasn't right). Just make fucking buttons, toggle switches and drop down menus.