Like macOS, that is, all locked down, with abilities to customize things revoked with every release, with most software paid, and only available on a narrow choice of pretty expensive (though powerful) hardware?

No, not really.

You can't make things smooth and flexible at the same time, it takes too much effort. You can't support a ton of varied hardware and make everything work smoothly in every case; it again would take non-viable amounts of work.

You can have a pretty smooth desktop Linux experience if you pick a large mainstream distro, pick reliable, well-supported mainstream hardware, and pick a polished desktop environment such as KDE or that Gnome variant of Pop OS.

But if you want to tweak things, you've got to tweak things.

IMHO, desktop Linux could use a little bit of locking down and progress is slowly being made in that direction.

It feels a little bonkers that in 2023, Flatpak or something like it isn’t the default way software is installed. That calculator you just installed should not have access to your camera or microphone or file system. That weather app may need your location, but you should be able to grant access to sensitive resources always, never, or only after asking.

If you look at your system like that, maybe QubesOS would be appealing to you.

Or maybe Fuchsia, when it's ready for desktop.

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