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it occurs to me that we're not a representative section of the online community

This! I have been preaching this for years, both online and IRL with the IT techs I manage. Tech nerds (myself included) forget just how little the normal person even cares about computers, let alone how they work.

The vast majority of people just want to buy a computer in a box, and have it work mostly perfectly. Which windows and Mac's do really really well. And yes, windows isnt perfect but neither is Linux. And for 95% of people the most demanding and complicated thing they'll do is web browsing, and power users might do something wild like play games through steam or install an alternate browser.

And we havent even touched work computers yet, which is a whole other level of "I don't care at all" from end users.

Remember people "Linux is amazing!" is meaningless to people who have never heard the acronym SSD let alone what it is or why it's better than a HDD.

I like to compare it to sewing because I genuinely don't care at all about it. But I hear people say "just thrift clothes and tailor them to you!" But that ignores two things.

1. I genuinely can't think of a whole lot of other leisure activities I'd want to do less than sewing and tailoring.
2. I barely know how to sew a button or mend a rip. Do you think I know how to actually tailor something? Or what types of tools I need? Or how to use them?