As if Linux problems were/are not tough to solve for average user. The difference is that most Linux users don't have the luxury of calling tech support to fix their issues, so they waste hours fixing something that shouldn't have existed in the first place. What would it be like to help someone update their Linux nvidia drivers over the phone...
The point you have missed is that there was no Windows 97. Anyone claiming to be running Windows 97 was most likely getting confused between Windows and MS Office, which did have a 97 version.
You mean compared to the abondended threads on Apple forums with major issues that never even get looked at? Or like the Microsoft support site where you can expect nothing but a canned response that does not even begin to tackle you actual issue?
I don't wanna start a flame war between Linux and non-Linux OSs, because Linux has already lost this war on the desktop front.
I've tried so much to make Linux suck less as a desktop OS, only to realize that it's all a waste of time. And for the ordinary person out there, firing up a terminal to do things is just not intuitive, and frankly, this cli thing belongs to the past when good gui and excellent monitors were not a thing.