Laugh or not, I installed Ubuntu on my partner’s mom laptop, she didn’t notice a difference, and she used Windows before that.

The only people who had trouble with Ubuntu were IT support employees of a local telecom provider when they needed to configure a network on the laptop.

To let you pick what I assume is the lowest hanging fruit, what are the most significant short comings of e.g. Calc vs Excel? I use it casually, but "casually" in a way that would probably be at least equivalent to professional use in most cases, and can't recall ever ending up with a blocking issue. So I'm certainly oblivious to the shortcomings and would love to know!

It's not 2001, when using OpenOffice and a Linux desktop meant crippling incompatibilities and an overall poor user experience.

The Linux Desktop may not be "great" by whatever standard of "great" you come up with, but the state of the Microsoft desktop is slow, inconsistent, frustrating, and tries to upsell you, while also attempting to steal your data.

Yep, the Windows desktop has steadily gotten worse since Windows 2000 Pro. Linux desktops have steadily gotten better.

I'd disagree. Most of the government office work can be easily dealt with Libere office.

Same can be said about GNOME.

Yes where what can't be done very well is CAD. All the top notch CAD of any engineering discipline is on Windows. Or Mac maybe.

Second come the games. You don't have Read Dead Redemption or Microsoft Flying Simulator with same fluidity as they are on Windows.

While I agree with you regarding libreoffice.

My tech illiterate mother got on a lot easier with modern desktop linux than she did with modern desktop windows.

Windows enjoys "ease of use" because of inertia, talk to someone who hasn't used Windows since XP and they'll find KDE a hell of a lot easier than whatever the fuck Windows 11 is doing.

Let's just say Windows 11 is a complete different OS compared to Windows 7 lest 10. That's still not counting Windows 11 being a new OS every couple of months, packed with brand new AI features that literally breaks your entire workflow because it's "more AI".

It's unfortunate that Microsoft is transforming their OS into an advertising hub. You can't login without a Microsoft account and such.

A better direction for Microsoft is to make it free for personal use and charge the businesses.

If you name some of these shortcomings people can fix them. What are they?

I disagree, I've been using linux for 20 years, and know the ins and outs in detail, and it's a easy choice for non-technical users. Just make sure they install the best distro (you know which one...), read the man pages, and know how to get those pesky gpu drivers working, brushing up on their bash skills would help too. Personally I recommend they compile their own kernel with some tweaks.