Buy European

99% of Windows users never install Windows anyway, and wouldn't be using the bypass anyway. They just buy a laptop and Windows is there.

A good replacement for people who can’t get away from MS Office might be OnlyOffice. Looks like MS Office, uses the same file types and is free of charge albeit not open source.

But the point where you’d have to set up a VM for someone who’s not technically inclined is probably not the point for them to switch to Linux.

Also, I think the problem with Linux‘ reliance on terminal commands is less that it’s not possible to avoid them – a lot of distros, like the ones you’ve named are indeed very easy to use without – it’s that if you try to look up a tutorial for anything, it will be using the terminal.

For example, if I search on DDG for something as simple as „how to update Ubuntu“, only the fourth entry mentions that there’s a gui updater. The rest tell you to use apt via the terminal. It’s not wrong of course but that’s not what my mum would want to see. And even with searches like „how to install vlc media player on mint“, while the first result does include how to do it via the gui, it’s the last of four options explained in the article. The first three use the terminal again.

Stuff like that happens a lot in the Linux world. And that obviously breeds the conception of Linux‘ complete reliance on the terminal to function properly. The community oftentimes is not very newbie friendly, if said newbie doesn’t want to jump in the deep end.

Exactly. I'm too scared of making the jump and screwing up in the process.

I would, though sadly the games I like to play don't run well on linux yet

Gnome just works... until it doesn't. I prefer KDE, as it's a lot more flexible.

Different folks, different strokes. Luckily there is choice.