hedwards: Linux has, for many years, required less technical knowledge than Windows. <snip>
It amazes me how many people keep repeating that old saw about Linux being hard to use.
itchy01ca01: Sorry, my experience differs. Thank you for your opinion though.
Quite often today you can find a decent distro as a liveCD. Boot up the disc, if you don't like it, nothing changed on your computer. If you like it, you can install it. Most (
if not all) distros include some kind of GUI. Some are more minimalistic (
DSL) while others go for a MAC or Windows feel in it's structure for familiarity. The commandline and it's strengths are never hidden, but at the same time the average user probably doesn't need them.
Yes GNU/Linux isn't nearly as difficult as it used to be. It used to be a hacker's sandbox and toy, now it's a fully fledged swiss army knife, but without the budget to leverage itself as the main OS... Then again so many systems are using it it's merely lowest on mainstream PC's. Systems that don't add to that count are things like routers, tablets (
Android), entertainment systems, slot machines... (
I can't think of any more).