Desktop Linux must match or exceed that base level of experience if it wants to drive meaningful adoption.
Let's be practical: give users a brief explanation of the downsides before they make choices like installing proprietary codecs. Treat them like adults. Let them have an easier life in favor of getting them on board.
It isn't. With Apple they get "it works or it doesn't" which is crap when it doesn't, because you can't fix it and Apple won't. With Microsoft things are commonly broken, often by accident, and no easier to fix than installing codecs on Linux. But worse, with both of them, is when things are broken on purpose. Almost like Linux. Only not for your benefit, but for theirs, at your expense.
Which puts some lie to the notion that easier always wins. It isn't easier to use Windows, it's a mess of bad code and half of it is out to get you. People use Windows because they have to, or because it came on their computer when they bought it. If you want adoption you need to address that -- do something about the Windows-only apps. Get more Linux PCs into the stores.
Which are the things that are happening. Things that used to need Windows are now websites or mobile apps. Google's money got Chromebooks onto the store shelves. And if you include ChromeOS, Linux has gone from <1% market share in 2010 to now having as much desktop market share as Mac did back then. All of which at the expense of Microsoft, because now Mac has twice that much.
Being opinionated isn't the problem, it's a feature. The competition is opinionated too, but its opinion is that you're cattle to be milked.
> This one really annoyed me. I mean. Canonical knows for a fact that everyone is going to install these codecs anyway. Why not include them to save the end user some trouble ?
> not be as scummy as Google, Apple, or Microsoft
People want the easiest possible thing, but Evil Corp wants the easiest possible thing to be the thing that screws you. The reason those codecs aren't installed by default is because of legal restrictions. "Just STFU and make it work" often involves requiring the user to agree to something which is bad for them, and putting at least a minimum amount of friction in the way of that is a good thing.
And it also puts the friction on other people. If the codec isn't installed by default and then someone else is using it, you will notice this instead of seamlessly using the proprietary one, and possibly complain to them and try to get them to use a free codec like AV1.
The cost, of course, is that it's a minor deterrent to adoption. But the endgame of valuing market share over principles is Microsoft.