You can get lucky, some of the aftermarket stuff works

What does Arch have to do with anything?

self explanatory

If you ever had to teach anyone anything, properly teach, you would know it’s a myth. It’s self-explanatory to you because you’re already familiar with the logic, language, conventions. I’m guessing, you grew up with all that from childhood, and you just forgot how you had to learn all that, and now you assume this knowledge didn’t need to be taught. You think cog is a universally understood language for settings because you always had it in front of you. Just like a lot of people think/thought that 3.5 floppy is a universally understood icon for “save”, and people who grow up now have no idea what I am talking about.
And then you assume that you are the average person, and start measuring everyone by this mark.
But if several years of teaching people of different skills, motivations, and ages, how to work with computers taught me anything, it’s that there is no universal language, there is no, and cannot be anything self-explanatory, and intuitive interface is a myth perpetuated by people who newer used anything other that one OS they grew up with. There is no amount of skeuomorphism you can employ that doesn’t require at least some amount of learning.
And when it comes to learning, let me tell you, there is nothing more straightforward to teach than “you type words and then read what the computer typed you back.”
And if several years of tech support taught me anything, it’s that if a regular person who doesn’t care about a computer encounters a problem, they don’t have inherently better time fixing it with GUI, never, not at all, not in a million years. I however always have way better time helping them, if it’s Linux and I can tell them what to type and they can read me the response. This actually true even if people are good with computers and know their OS.

neither accessible nor feasible for the average computer user.

Absolute hogwash. Learning like five short words is absolutely not unfeasible for any literate person, if a user can’t do that, you can be sure they aren’t actually an average user, they can’t do anything with gui either. And probably need help tying their shoes.
A two years old child can learn 5 short words. A grown up can write them on a sticky note and plop them on a screen.

It’s not either-or. You can install KDE on Arch with one button in the archinstall you mentioned, and it will be a GUI based distro, you can happily live moving your mouse around the coloured buttons if that’s your fancy.

Yeah, the way Google doesn’t make a Linux version of their product is indeed bad. They say it’s because they want us all using their web version, and it would be probably even a valid excuse, but they make their soft for Windows, but not for Linux for some reason.
Thankfully they are in minority, and you can just ditch them and use different, more user-friendly clouds. Or, as you mentioned, cool working tools that community made for free, since Google is apparently incapable.
Edit: back to the previous point, you managed to do it first time without help, which kind of confirms my point. There is a Russian proverb “while the eyes are afraid, the hands are already at work”, which is very apt here.

None of that is code.
It’s possible that when you ask for help you don’t even use the words correctly, like you demonstrated here, so you expect people to help you without doing a bare minimum of even understanding the terms. If this is true, it’s on you.
So many times I saw people comming hot, asking for help, and when given a command to run, getting angry that it’s some words they don’t understand, and asking for a different solution, one that doesn’t require commands.
I don’t know, for example, what problem you had that required you to “understand filesystem” whatever you mean by that, and if so, what solution to it you expected.

In the 15 years of me using Linux as my main system both for work and for fun, I have never experienced this situation. Never. I seriously don’t know what you guys doing that not only requires you to type 30 lines of commands - insane amount of commands, you can setup a complicated server from scratch with this amount if commands - that can also be accomplished with two clicks.
Give me at least couple of examples, I’m very curious

If you’re getting coding advice, you might be on the wrong forums, which can explain the snark.
You don’t need to do code to use Linux. You can use Bash if you want, but it’s not a necessity

Proton owner came out as big creep, so don’t really recommend.

Absolutely aggree about KDE, I helped a bunch of people switch to Linux, and for experienced users, KDE was the key. Not only it works better, but it also follows the logic people are used to, but with more freedom.

But I can select nearly any software since Windows 7 and it will still work on windows 10/11. That is far less common on linux.

This is so demonstrably, laughably not true it’s not even funny.

How do you know what to type in a CLI

The same way you know where the setting you’re after located. As my little experiment showed it’s not obvious if your problem isn’t trivial. And if it’s trivial, you can be sure it’s trivial on every modern OS.
If you spend a fraction of time you spent learning your GUI on learning the set of commands you have, it will be very easy for you. There is autocomplete and there are various helps, and there are conventions a lot of the software follows. If you’re literate, it’s fine.

Oh hey, let’s run an experiment then. I’m not a Windows poweruser, but I have an access to it. Let’s see, in almost real time, how long it will take me to find how to change Wi-Fi power save setting (I don’t know what it is, so very fair this way).

Well, it’s a setting, so let’s go where settings are. I go to a big menu, find settings in it, assume wifi is in network settings, go there, find wifi setting. Read through all the menus. Nothing. I’m 5 menus deep, and there is “more adapter options button”. It asks an admin password, so let’s give it to it. Completely different window opens, one that I saw all those years ago in Windows XP. It’s called wifi 3 properties. It doesn’t render properly on my monitor, the text is blurry, but we’re not in “googling shit” territory yet so I power through. (later I found out that it’s normal, this menu was constructed when 640x480 was considered high def resolution, and it struggles with modern screens). In this menu there is 12 rows of something, I don’t know what QoS Packet Scheduler means or what Client For Windows does. Let’s press configure on this one. That menu closes, it asks ominous question, and new one opens. It assures me that the device is working properly, and in advanced tab there is 24 different settings I can change. Settings like “Fat Channel Intollerant” (It is disabled. I don’t know if it’s good or bad), or Human Presence Detection (it’s auto. I assume it’s something related to the upcoming robot uprising). There is no help, there is no explanation, I lost count how deep I am, it’s more than 10. I’m like half an hour in, probably. I checked all the available settings. I forgot what I’m looking for and had to re-read your comment to remind myself. But at least I don’t have to edit a text file, amirite?
Ok, fuck it, let’s google. First link.

1. Right-click the. …
2. Select Power Options.
3. Select Additional power settings.
   I cry for a minute, click the link, the list isn’t there. I still don’t know what to click, and the link is about Intel. Is my wifi adapter made by intel? Do I need to know it? Let’s google further.
   Stack overflow. Start > Search > Device Manager > Networks Adapters > Double Click yours > Power Management Tab > uncheck: Turn this device off to save power
   Click yours. So I do need to know it. OK, let’s do that. I should’ve guessed that you don’t find setting in settings, it’s intuitive after all.
   It looks like one of the menus that I saw already, but it’s not, it’s different one. It once again assures me that the device is working properly. There is no settings. There is no Power Management Tab. Let’s google that then.
   Mycrosoft forums.

Why is the power management tab missing?

Good day! I’m John Dev a Windows user like you and I’ll be happy to assist you today. I know this has been difficult for you, Rest assured, I’m going to do my best to help you. When was the last time it worked properly?

Please check and try Rbotero’s solution in the older thread in the link below if it helps. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/for…

Kindly let me know if this helps or if you have any further concerns.

Hi, I’m Robinson, an Independent Advisor and a Windows user like you. Install the latest driver 22.20.0 released yesterday. https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/130293

Note: This is a non-Microsoft website. The page appears to be providing accurate, safe information. Watch out for ads on the site that may advertise products frequently classified as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Products).

Well, the answer is 4 years old. My drivers are up to date, so that doesn’t help. Let’s dig further. Another post on the Microsoft forums.

Another post said to go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power in regedit, where I had to create a new DWORD called CsEnabled and set the value to 0, and restart, but that did not work. How do I fix this?

Damn, I am sure glad I don’t have to edit any text files, that would be unintuitive as fuck. Anyway, let’s open regedit and create some new DWORDs, shall we? That would not be a problem, regedit is easy and intuitive program that allows very easy way to intuitively do anything.
Anyway, it didn’t help. Turns out it stopped helping at some point. Further in the Microsoft forums people offering helping powershell scripts that I need to run in Elevated Powershell to do…something, I assume? It changes some register keys, it’s not obvious what.

At this point, I give up. I am easily hour in, I don’t know how to change wifi power safe setting in Windows, and I am afraid I will never know. Sure glad I didn’t have to edit one symbol in a text file the name of which is easily googlable.

the average user does not want

The average user wants their problem gone. And will use whatever helps. Windows users were editing register and editing ini files since Windows was an addon to DOS, and continue doing it. For a literate person there is absolutely nothing more inheritly more intuitive or easy in clicking a checkbox in a fifth submenu than entering a command in a console. Stop perpetuating this weird myth.

The fuck are you talking about. It’s available in all the repositories

To be honest, nothing is intuitive in any complex software. Every time I open Photoshop I want to cry in pain. But it isn’t because Photoshop is bad (that I don’t know actually), but because I am not familiar with it at all

They don’t know how it works, but they roughly kind of know how to operate it. And they mistake their years of experience for the intuitivness.

Not this specifically, but I doubt it’s different from all the other videos made with the same technology

Do you know those videos where they put a single frame of scary face as a jump scare prank? It’s very quickly flashes, so you see enough to be scared, but not enough to understand what’s happening and make sense of it. That much. It’s visible that much.