I don’t use Arch but I have noticed a growing number of forums where people seem to talk about a lot of problems. I have used Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu etc. But Arch stands out as the distro that seems to have the most helpless users. Or is it the most broken distro?

Windows is a marketing and spying platform. It is targeted by any and every scammer, hacker, used for harvesting your data by programs you install. It is sold as an “easy to use” computer - most ppl don’t even know what an OS is - until 6 months later when the CPU is at 100% and you don’t know why, the hard drive is filling up and you no longer know if your files are local or in “the cloud”. I service older computers for friends and family on a regular basis. Half of them now have Ubuntu installed on old laptops and it’s an eye opener for them. Because most people don’t install new apps. They just want to browse, read emails, open documents, watch movies and listen to music. If you avoid snap and flatpak and install with APT or just download an AppImage you’re going to be ok.

Once upon a time I worked for a company where I would be called with requests like “I can’t work because my computer is broken”. I would go and ask “Where is your computer” and the employee would point to her monitor. I would then press the power button on the monitor and they looked at me like I was a magician. I would point to the actually PC under the desk and say “btw THIS is your computer” and they would stare with confusion and disbelief.

Nothing wrong with that given a multi billion dollar scheme to trap people with Copilot.

I find that very attractive. It also keeps certain people away.