Me: Today's school lunch is serving a giant chicken nugget. Will you eat that?
Son: Yay, okay, I love chicken nuggets!
Me: There's a bun involved, you can ignore it.
Son: ::shrugs:: okay
He hates sandwiches. If I had lead with the cost, that he'd be getting the breaded chicken patty in the form of a sandwich, he would have refused. Now, he'll happily set the bun aside. Kids are weird. But, I guess adults are too.
The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre was sitting in a cafe when a waitress approached him: “Can I get you something to drink, Monsieur Sartre?”
Sartre replied, “Yes, I’d like a cup of coffee with sugar, but no cream”.
Nodding agreement, the waitress walked off to fill the order and Sartre returned to working. A few minutes later, however, the waitress returned and said, “I’m sorry, Monsieur Sartre, we are all out of cream — how about with no milk?”
If they go into it thinking "oh, this is like installing windows" and then their expectations violated, they will be frustrated.
If they go into it thinking "oh, this is a way to get more out of a computer, if I'm willing to do some debugging." then they can think "well, I'm the type of person that does things best when I've got a solid theoretical grounding. Let me go get a book first." or "well, this could be a puzzle, let me get a sandwich before I attempt this."
Working with Linux is indeed frustrating at times, but it can be well-worth mustering the frustration-tolerance. But to do that, you've got to know yourself and know what you're getting yourself into.
Rather than hooking people with benefits and then disappointing them with the cost, only those who remain interested after they are familiar with the downsides will stay and listen. It also serves as a good time saver for both parties.