Non-technical users don’t have any problems with Linux as an alternative. They don’t know nor care what is running on their PC as long as they can click on icons opening the handful of basic programs they actually use.

My lady friend has got to be the most tech illiterate person I’ve met. In as much as I try to educate her, she’ll end up saying ‘I don’t care, just make it do what it do.’ She had an old laptop and was getting frustrated because Windows has a tendency to get junked up with crap, and things start not to function properly. So I swapped her Windows OS for Mint. It didn’t phase her a bit, and it really wasn’t much issue with ‘learning’ a new OS. Now, she doesn’t use the cli and asks me to install something, but if there’s an icon, she’s good to go. She did mention that it seemed a bit more snappier, which is probably due to the way Linux addresses RAM and resources.

I recommend Linux to a lot of normal, everyday, people, I’ll even set them up with a live thumbdrive to test drive and see if it meets their expectations. I think the hesitancy for most people is that they grew up using Windows, and so anything that isn’t Windows seems scary. There can be a learning curve if you want to pop the hood and get into the guts, but for the most part the people I recommend Linux to, take to it rather well.