My mum, who is in her 60’s, and never used anything other than Windows is on Linux Mint for nearly two years now and has no problem using it. I was surprised she has even explored features like virtual desktops and is using them now. She is far far away from being a tech person. And she never needed to touched a terminal while using it.

But I needed to install Mint for her. I think she would have given up at the point where the boot order had to be changed to start from the USB with the live/install media. And this is the biggest downside of Linux: You can’t just buy the average consumer pc/notebook with a pre-installed Linux. It is always windows installed. That’s why people keep using Windows. Not because Windows is better.