Some of these savvy people discover these OS's and think they might be a perfect fit for their non-savvy relatives.
However once you (need to) go just a little step beyond the bounds of what the OS creator set for you everything simple comes crumbling down again and you are stuck with the complicated mess that is the Linux Desktop where freedom and customization is both its greatest feature and its greatest weakness.
Sure, I’m technically capable of doing all this myself. I don’t need the macOS-esque user friendliness. But I also don’t need takeaway food. But sometimes, home cooking is just a chore, yknow?
Most people want to be productive with their computers quickly, including most skilled users. If you like configurability, there's a plethora of options.
I deployed it on an old laptop for my relatives and it's been a worry-free experience since.
I had to deploy some non-free softwares (ex: Spotify, Google Chrome) but since they have their own APT repo they are kept up-to-date with the system updates.
When I look at ElementryOS, PopOS, PureOS, Etc...OS they all seem to ignore the irony that someone savvy enough to discover an obscure distro might not need everything to be a user friendly macOS-esque experience. It's rehashed, conceited, and insignificant. I could take Ubuntu Mate and tweak it with conky, i3wm and call it whateverOS, but I wont because I know anyone who ever found it could easily do the same first themselves. That's the great thing about Linux that we keep ignoring. Most people dont care about your config setup, it's still Ubuntu at th end of the day.
I'd argue that community developed *nix systems without corporate funding will never be for the masses. If you want to make an impact on Linux, fix upstream instead of adding onto the heap with abandoned projects that attempt to make the lives easier for a consumer demographic that has other interests than the OS that runs their internet browser and word processor.