I disagree with this because for 20 years both the Ubuntu and Debian GUI installer ran like a practical joke from hell. Even Linus himself said he couldn’t get it to work. Only Debian really improved while Ubuntu continues to somehow explode every time I try it

Every other distro besides hardcore ones like Gentoo and Arch have pretty basic installers that greatly outshine the crappy windows 8/10/11 setup screen.

Fedora has an auto installer tool so all you really need is a USB and not some magic funky thing called rufus.

There’s even entire DE setups dedicated to looking and functioning exactly like windows to the point that the average person wouldn’t even recognize nor care to know the difference.

Yes actually getting someone to replace an OS is hard no matter how easy you make it because it involves doing something unknown or new. But by the same token, we used to run DOS and install windows from floppy disks like it was no big deal back before windows owned the desktop market. Talk to anyone who was a college student in the 90s and they’ll probably recognize the word UNIX, even in unrelated non CS fields.