I just spent over two hours fighting to be able to use my Linux desktop again. The graphical environment, Xorg, crashed upon starting every time. I went down a long “it’s the drivers” path, got sidetracked with “it’s the new kernel” path, and finally it turned out to be a nasty interaction between the latest version of Xorg-server and the desktop environment I use, XFCE.
While I love Linux most of the time, it’s things like this that make me realize that it will not be something that Person Average can use on their own any time soon. Chromebooks are as close as most people will get, and the fact that they run Linux is pretty hidden to the standard user. I’ve been running Linux as my primary OS for over sixteen years now, and it still trips me up several times a year. And I used to do this for a living!