Android is a repudiation of traditional “distro” Linux userspace. I think it’s Android approach that has the best chance of reaching mainstream adoption in the laptop form factor with consumers.
I'm not saying "android on a laptop is the way of the future". I'm saying the Android model, to sweep aside the status quo distros and start fresh with new approach to userspace, is the path I see most likely to bring Linux to the masses in laptop/desktop form factor.
If the people you see using Linux on the laptop are developers, then I don't think they count as "consumers" - they're on the production side of things! I don't know any consumers who use Linux on a laptop. I last gave it a shot in 2018 but decided it's not for me.
In my experience, you are still much more likely to get broken hardware support when updating kernels on Linux, though I have no idea why. I almost never see or experienced stuff like my laptop camera not working at all after an update on Windows, but it does happen on Linux. The same goes for GPUs, which can break if you update your kernel often.
It's not necessarily the kernel's fault but it's something that does happen often using distros like say, fedora.
I think the main difference is that Linux supports and runs on almost everything, but in a lot of use cases it will be a specific version of the kernel that will be used for a product's lifetime (for embedded products) or have every update very heavily curated through a third party like Red hat. In those cases, Linux is rock stable, far more than Windows can be.
But for regular, personal usage, I genuinely think that Linux does break more often.
I don't disagree at all. I'm completely allergic to ads at this point, hence why I use Linux a lot more :). But let's be honest, for the average user, the choice is super obvious. Yes, windows shows you ads in the start menu, but it "works" and constantly so. They don't need to necessarily worry about a windows update borking their GPU drivers, or having to use grub to boot into an older kernel because some proprietary driver stopped working after an update.
I personally know enough to fix or even prevent those issues, but for the vast majority of desktop users, even less casual users like gamers, they really don't care about the stuff you listed. It's sad, because it absolutely ruins the experience of what would otherwise be a great OS (the core of windows is great imo, just not everything on top of it).
is somewhat true. State of the video drivers from AMD are not good on Windows and atrociously bad on Linux. NVIDIA are drivers are barely of the acceptable quality on Linux.
And that's just when considering core system components. But non-technical users will expect any odd-ball peripheral they pick up at Office Depot or Best Buy to work as advertised out of the box, and it probably will not.