Which makes no sense, because there are distributions that have packages. In other words, it's not what I'd call a massive effort - it's already been done.

It makes no sense to you that a user might want to install something that's not in their operating systems store/repo?

Sure. But you have heard of Snaps and Flatpack, right?

I hadn't until you mentioned it. It's possible.

But even then there are endless issues with drivers. Like research your chipset, find a repository on github, and then clone and build it yourself kind of issues.

Trust me, I like the idea and would love getting past our two party system. But Linux will never be easy.

You are stretching now. There probably are some chipsets that have issues, but most drivers are built into the Linux kernel. There are always going to be issues with drivers, but this is not across the board.

Your argument is that Linux cannot be easy, not that there isn't any issues.

Anyway, I'm cool if you don't want to use it and if you want to maintain your worldview, but you haven't presented me any real arguments or evidence to back this worldview.

I'm stretching? So all printers, scanners, wifi cards, webcams, wireless headphones, fancy keyboards, etc. just work out of the box in your experience with Linux? I was literally installing a third party driver that had to be manually made while I was tapping my last measage to you.

For the I guess third or fourth time I use Linux regularly. I'm not telling you Linux is hard because I want it to be hard. God knows I wish it wasn't so hard. I'm simply stating my observations as a user of multiple distros over several years.

In Linux you always end up in the command line. The Linux community is hostile to newbies. CLI programs are inconsistent, constantly changing, and often obtuse which means if you want to use Linux you will need to learn it.

Ubuntu did a great job making Linux easy, relatively speaking. If they hadn't cancelled Ubuntu Touch I'd be tapping to you on that right now. But even in Ubuntu you will not get far without the command line. Say you want to setup a VPN in Ubuntu. There's a good chance you're going to be doing some non-easy work in the command line vs Windows or MacOS where it's just point and click.

I have to wonder why you insist on pretending that Linux is easy. Windows is easy. That's why its popular. Linux is difficult. That's why it doesn't appeal to people who want a computer that "just works".

In my opinion the way to make Linux easy is to do the hard work of documenting and integrating all of the open source software that makes Linux great. It's not glamarous but seriously, someoene needs to do it, lol.