I don't disagree, there is a level of difficulty that comes from Linux being so configurable.

I would say though that it doesn't discount sensible defaults that work for the majority of people. I only briefly used it but it seemed like elementary was on its way to towards that goal (before what seems like an implosion on the side of the company).

That's never going to eliminate the problem, the user can always screw something up or bugs rear their ugly head. The one thing is though there has to be a reason to most non-tech people outside of conceptual ideas like Freedom. Like if my dad doesn't want to spend the money for a new rig but not have the OS slow to a crawl, then I might suggest Linux. If everything is working fine, then I probably wouldn't bother.