I love Linux, but I'll admit what you say has some credence.
Linux has a lot of polish now. Most big distros are going to have an easy to use GUI installer, and there are several mature very usable desktop environments.
But, for example, if a new user has an nvidia card it's probably going to be a poor experience for them and they won't understand why or how to fix it. So there's shortcomings there. I blame nvidia for this specific issue, but your average user probably doesn't care about that. They just want their video card to work well.