I think it's just general fear of the command line. I've had a friend who always owned a mac, and started using it for his programming course. While assisting him in trying to compile some programs or use something like git from the mac's zsh terminal, I can tell it's a stressful event for him, even though all I told him to enter were simple commands like ls, mkdir, g++ etc.

I have a machine that runs fedora with no trouble at all. I never needed to debug anything, multimonitors and sound outputs all work. But every once in a while, something happens which can only be solved through the command line, because linux simply does not have a settings utility as extensive as windows control panel. It's fine for me, but telling that friend to bring up the terminal and enter a cryptic line will probably freak him out.

I have installed Linux for purpose based computers in my IT and production line of work. And I’m curious about this topic. It’s sort of a dilemma. I work mainly in environments that require full fledged reliable tracking sessions in Adobe and Avid outboard hardware, etc. any time I tried to use Linux as a daily driver I regretted it. … But I want to use it. I agree with the values, and I prefer the customization and optimal use of my hardware… am I missing something as a Linux user about which distro or the way in which I’m using it.

are some of these considerations also part of what spurred your post OP?

I use arch and it's frustrating for me too. I just tried to boot mint on a Chromebook for a friend and it shit itself with file explorer errors, taskbar going missing, and not being able to connect to the wifi. Pretty much abandoned it now.

I am a windows power user because Linux just plain doesn’t do what I expect it to.

Call me an idiot or inexperienced, but trying to transition over and do everything I can on windows doesn’t happen. When I first tried Linux in middle school, I couldn’t manage to install a single program. Software that should work doesn’t, and I still sympathize with Linus Sebastian typing in “Yes, do as I say” when all he thought he was doing was installing Steam. I’d love to transition over my daily OS to Linux, but I’m already in so deep with a million custom tools for Windows and a decade of in-depth and occupational knowledge it would be a pain to start from scratch.

Tbh, after using Linux since 2019, i always needed to reinstall ubuntu based Linux distros and I have a tendency to just hate them for being so hardcoded and trashy. Feels like Windows but its evem more hardcoded. I ended up using Manjaro and yeah, I somehow mamaged to fix most but not all problems caused by Manjaro. But it was also not a good distro. I ended up at Arch Linux and somehow managed to just never reinstall it because everything is actually... finally... not fucking hardcoded. It mostly has a good wiki page that explains the details.

The problem with Arch is that its not beginner friendly nor for people who just want things to work. Its a long process of installing and setting everything by yourself, with the advantage that you finally have a system that is fully tranaparent to yourself and easy to manage and understand it.

I think this is a clash on workflows. I'm a windows user turned to linux. All I knew about was Windows and there was frustration during the transition. Now I'm at home in linux. Recently I had to use Windows for work. I wanted the gnome edge scrolling feature for my touchpad on windows. Couldn't figure it out even after hours and days of effort. The package management options was okay but sub par when you compare with linux. I hated the windows terminal. It always felt slow on my laptop. But was okay on workstation. I tried to mimick many other linux behaviour, like krunner and the windows alternatives ended up slowing down the system further and I was left unsatisfied. I've now returned to linux and run a windows vm in gnome boxes whenever I need something in windows world. We need to accept that linux and windows are like apples and oranges. We can't make them taste and feel the same. We could hope for software releases for both platforms from developers and vendors. But the experience would always remain different. In the end we the end user has to compromise.

Edit: Op I think I went a bit off topic keeping other comments in mind. All I can offer you is the frustration is inevitable if you want to do edge cases. Stick to gui options. Try to understand commands before jumping to cli. Use a container or vm to do the inevitable trial and error learning. Try to pick up on how best to phrase your problem so that your search engine can give you the relevant articles and not spam.

When I was still a Linux noob I used to want to do all of the cool customizations and would often end up rendering the operating system unusable. Eventually I just switched to KDE whoch has a lot of customization built in. Some distros make it harder to shoot yourself in the foot, but I think being able to customize and run the latest software out of the box makes a huge difference.

So experienced user yet complaining about it not being beginner friendly?

The average person is extremely tech illiterate. This is not a condemnation of their personal choices, or view of the world, or politics or anything like that. Even highly educated people cannot explain even the most basic things about computers, the internet, electricity or the nature of information.

Linux feels simple to you because you likey have both education and experienced with computer systems. However, the interconnected world is not that difficult to understand if you have the opportunity to understand it. This privilege absolutely makes everyone else in the world who does not have that opportunity or desire feel shockingly inept on technology issues.