To be clear, I’m far from the average user. I’ve installed Linux on my PCs many times over multiple decades. I’m looking at a RedHat installation CD that was printed in a different century right now. I’m way more tech-savvy and platform-agnostic than the average Windows user.

And even I went “wait, GNOME hasn’t figured out mousewheels and touchpads in 25 years? Yeah, nope, I’m out”.

Desktop Linux is a hobby for hobbyists. If you think troubleshooting that stuff, customizing your setup and distro-hopping for fun are engaging things to do on your PC it’s a good time. If in the process of doing that you set it up just like you want it the performance, stability and compatibility aren’t terrible. By the time I hit those annoyances I had a mostly working setup. Audio was fine, iGPU was fine, touchscreen was fine, performance and responsiveness were better than Windows, manufacturer software alternatives were installed and mostly working.

But if you just want a computer that works any one of these roadblocks is a dealbreaker. Going online and seeing the related drama (posts complaining that GNOME devs will close issues about this out of personal preference or spite, hacky half-solutions, arguments about whether this is a real issue or how much better/worse other platforms or distros are) the entire ecosystem seems less than serious and definitely not sustainable for any device you need for user-level, reliable use.