Battery life, display scaling, sleep & wake up issues, trackpad gestures, sound output, GPU-accelerated video playback... Just to name a couple of problems I hope not to encounter every time I decide to give Linux another chance, but I still do.
To fix them, you need to run some arcane commands, edit some config files, compile your own kernel, ... I don't know. I'll have something that "just works". I'll keep using Linux headless on a server, where it really shines.
At least you can fix them.
Also, sorry can't help the cheap shot: how is typing "arcane commands" any different than clicking on "gnostic glyphs"? Anything can sound complex if you want it to :)
I'm not disputing your experiences but it's so surprising to me. I exclusively use Linux on the desktop on numerous devices, some of which seem like prime candidates for the types of issues you mention, but I've not had any major problems in literal years, especially since switching to the zen kernel.
It's always a shame when people don't like the things you do I guess.
Oh and if you're lucky you have the option to hover for a second to find what the icons mean through a tooltip. Having to do that with every icon until you find the right one is not pleasant.
I just find typing "help" or "man" a lot more intuitive than the random clicking on icons.
I'm sure that I'm a rare specimen and most people would prefer clicking to reading, but personally I find discoverability a bad user experience.
Having a row of icons with vague meanings, or endlessly nested/badly categories menus isn't intuitive or easy.
Conversely, there are a plethora of terminal-based programs with absolutely excellent UX.
Anyone can edit a well-documented template/example config file, and a good CLI program is almost like an interactive conversation, which again is an extremely intuitive experience. It's not the fault of whether the interface is graphical or not in most cases, it's just mediocre/bad software.
YMMV. Just yesterday, I discovered that the Debian installer doesn't include support for UFS drives, which have been available in laptops for 3+ years now.
(Explaining to my wife why I was returning the laptop I'd just bought wouldn't have been a great endorsement for "Linux runs out of the box".)
Coincidental bug report from mail list last week: https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.o...
Did you see the follow up comments by the way? Compared to trying to get support from a commercial vendor the FOSS world never ceases to amaze me with the degree of effort people are willing to make to get other people on the way again.
So, let's strike 'a couple of years old' and add 'anything mainstream that is a couple of years old'. We're going to end up with a very long definition if we have to add all of the possible exceptions but I suspect there are more devices capable of running Linux by now than there are of running Windows!
And yes, the support was good! I expect the installer will be fixed within a few months, or whenever the next Debian release happens, given how easy the fix looks to be.