As Torvalds pointed out in 2019, is that while some major hardware vendors do sell Linux PCs – Dell, for example, with Ubuntu – none of them make it easy. There are also great specialist Linux PC vendors, such as System76, Germany’s TUXEDO Computers, and the UK-based Star Labs, but they tend to market to people who are already into Linux, not disgruntled Windows users. No, one big reason why Linux hasn’t taken off is that there are no major PC OEMs strongly backing it. To Torvalds, Chromebooks “are the path toward the desktop.”
I truly wish to see the day when any computer can easily run Linux painlessly.
I think the easiest ones I’ve seen are Linux Mint and all the vanilla installs of other mature distros, but I still see cases from time to time with friends and strangers who still somehow manage to get their setups in some issue or another, whether it’s their hardware’s fault or factory defaults / configs getting in the way or their own.
I’m just glad that these are getting much better than ever as time goes on.
I’m being pedantic but friendly would be a more accurate term than mature. An example: Gentoo (or Arch) is very mature but not friendly or “easy”.