> Free and open source software has a strong tendency towards being difficult to install and get up and running. TeX and LaTeX are no exception.

Setting up a LaTeX environment in Windows can be difficult if you do not want to install one of the very big suites (although being honest, who is worried about 2GB when you need more space for something like printer "drivers"?). However, in most Linux distributions, you just choose LaTeX in your package manager and it works. And this is the case for most free and open source software. I do not know about Macs.