Linux needs to grow. Stop telling people it’s ‘tech-y’ or acting like you’re more advanced for using it, you are scaring away people. Linux Mint can be used by a senile person perfectly.
Explain shortly the benefits, ‘faster, more secure, easier to use, main choices of professionals and free’. Ask questions that let you know if they need to dual boot, ‘do you use Adobe, anti-cheat games, or Microsoft Office’, ‘how new is your computer’.
And most importantly, offer to help them install.
They don’t understand distros, just pick Linux Mint LTS Cinnamon unless they’re curious.
That’s it, spread Linux to as many people as possible. The larger the marketshare, the better support we ALL get. We can fight enshittification. Take the time to spread it but don’t force it on anyone.
AND STOP SCARING PEOPLE AWAY. Linux has no advertising money, it’s up to us.
Part of me thinks you’re being unreasonable, because that question did receive decent responses (1 CLI + GUI suggestion, 1 GUI suggestion, and 2 beginning to try troubleshoot the drive access problem).
But I suspect it’s just a dissonance in perspectives, maybe due to your Linux distro causing a bunch of stupid issues, which haven’t been properly noticed by anyone yet.
It’s a shame that some distros like Ubuntu have enshittified so badly that they’ve become unsupportable. (Nothing seems to work rationally – the same reason I find it impossible to support users on Windows).
Advocates and potential/new users alike, need to consider specific distributions, not just “Linux”.