It's funny that you say that, since that was the solution to Windows issues for... decades? Not sure if that's still the case, as I haven't touched it in forever.

Regardless, not sure where you've gotten that impression of Linux. The only times I've reinstalled is when I've gotten a new laptop, and in those cases I just copy my home directory over to the new laptop and everything just works.

The GP's example of needing to reinstall because they wanted to change desktop environments is nonsensical; I don't think anyone even remotely knowledgeable would recommend a reinstall in that case. Just a trip to the package manager app and a restart.

I think there are quite a few reasons why the Linux desktop isn't more common, but "need to reinstall to fix issues" certainly isn't one of them.