You raise some great points though. The average user isn't going to use workarounds or alternatives, so we should focus on actually solving the problem instead of saying use this instead.

These kinds of things are the first things that come to mind when people start going all "Linux is ready for $blah" because while I can figure out how to deal with these issues, they're invariably the first things I get phone calls from my non-IT-career friends about when they switch to Linux.

Windows changes insane amounts of interface whatnot on the regular, users can usually figure THAT out, finally, no matter what OS they're using.

It's the stuff that just works out of the box on windows or Mac but doesn't on Linux that's at issue, and it's what will continue to halt widespread adoption at the casual user level, unfortunately.