[Cyder]

Having just installed Debian 11xfce on a Dell Intel i5 laptop, and fighting with the power applet crashing b/c power manager fails to start, I'm having flashbacks to 20 years ago with the same problems. Still having to add nomodeset to grub for the screen to work has been stopping people from using linux for 20 years.

Seriously, if a fresh install won't boot, how's a newbie not going to feel overwhelmed. For those same 20 years, people have been saying to me ( even IT people ) that they'd like to try linux but don't have the time to troubleshoot everything. Even if they sink a few hours into getting the screen to work, laptops still burn through the battery and they go back to Windows since they use it on battery.

I use both Windows and linux, and with Windows quality crashing, people keep proclaiming the year of linux. But there's still a long way to improve linux before it gets as good as poor quality Windows.