The multitude of stories like this I have heard is why I'm grateful my first exposure to Linux/FOSS was on the enterprise end and not the hobbyist end.
Also about 5 years before the scene got giga-infested with troonery, but the software end of the spectrum was still weird and dysgenic, even then.
The vast majority of the lunatics are a small part of the community. They happen to be the loudest, unfortunately. I don't think it represents most of the hobbyist/professional-turned-home users like myself.
A lot of hobbyists are people using Raspberry Pis, trying out gaming on whatever is the latest gaming distro and setting up Home Assistant stuff and NAS use cases, and you will rarely hear about them because if they post somewhere, it is to ask specific questions or work on particular things.
Generally, the bigger problem with FOSS is political activism / purity spiral bullshit. You can see this happening around Omarchy. Discussions about the distro have devolved into an obligatory spiel about "far right taking over open source". These people are making the exact same point as you and others do on here, and instead of "troons", they say "far right", "Nazis", etc.
... Rant about stuff that is Wine / Proton / Steam OS specific and lack of standardisation
There is plenty of standardisation in the Linux space. When people make statements like this, they really have no idea what they are talking about.
Most Linux distros other than the package manager are literally the same software, in the same directories, with the same config files, etc.
Often differences are nothing more than "Debian has version X.Y of the kernel, and Fedora has version X.Z" or "This
~/.bin path is preconfigured in
~/.profile if it exists."
Outside of specific distros that eschew these standards (which are niche), things are being increasingly standardised.
The vast majority of hardware just works in Linux. The vast majority of software can be installed simply.
Mods and other specialist niche software don't work properly because they aren't something their users/maintainers are focused on.
But that is why the only distro that is 100% guaranteed to work is by Valve, SteamOS which is made by a multinational megacorporation with arguably as much influence as Microsoft and isn't even FOSS
Valve doesn't have anywhere near the influence of Microsoft. Most people outside of PC gaming have no idea Valve/Steam exists.
Until SteamOS works with Nvidia, just use LTSC windows or its not going to work for your average person
Your average person isn't using Windows either. They are using a tablet and/or a phone with iOS or Android. In don't understand why you and other think any Linux user cares whether there is widespread usage and constantly pretend that this is the goal.
