As someone who is way into the idea of Linux, wants to switch, and is very gun-shy about the million little programs and extensions I might not be able to replace, let me tell you what is required of anybody who is actually genuine in their desire to see Linux gain the traction it deserves:

Don't ever tell anybody to read the manual again. Just answer the god damn question. It's good when answers to basic, common problems are peppered around the internet like that; it's dumb and wrong and weird to think of it as a thing to be avoided. If you'd like to put a link to the part of the manual where the questioner could have looked to find it, that's cool, too. Don't just leave the link--there's a good chance they didn't understand it and that's why they're asking. Maybe they just want a person-answer instead of a reference-manual-answer, and it's good when the answer exists in both forms. Every answered question is a contribution.

I would go even further: the version of reality where Linux beats Windows and ushers in an era of community-centric open source dominance is populated by a Linux community that considers "rtfm", "pebcac", etc to be borderline bannable offenses. If you are a small, weak person, and want Linux to be your way of thinking you're better than other people, you'll drive question-askers away, back to Inferiority Land, using your knowledge to dunk on them instead of help them, and call it a win. These are the ugly bridge trolls, who may as well be paid Microsoft employees, keeping people away from your community, and a serious change of pace might yield much smoother adoption. At the very least, the community owes it to their own work to see how much smoother.

As someone considering the switch seriously, the knowledge that I may have to deal with people like that is absolutely, 100% a factor, and I am someone who has no qualms about telling someone on the internet to fuck off, so it's gonna be more of an issue for many others who are more conflict-averse.

The Linux community needs to take very seriously whether it actually wants increased open source adoption, or if it wants to remain a tiny minority so that it has a nice, large majority to feel better than.

Learning to read docs is a skill itself that needs to be developed separately

I think that is what you need to do to learn anything on computers... It's a skill, yeah, you need to improve it and not get scared, I remember those feelings a time ago, and now I realize everything fixes if I just read the docs/issues. No need to ask, so I wish the best for you and remember always to read the docs before posting/asking.

Are those docs written or proofread by noobs?

Depends, if a noob tries to do something complex they won't be able, let's use common sense also here. Don't try to do your own distro, but you can learn how Kdenlive works to edit a video or use --help on a command if you are not sure what it does or can do.

techies do want those details I’d have to omit for non-techies

If you don't understand the technical details of the documentation, or you search for what are those technical details (that can solve your issues) or you are on the wrong documentation.

For a common user, if they want to play a game they just need to install Steam and enable the option to play Windows games on Linux, that would be the same as doing it on Windows, if the user doesn't know how to do it, they search and some user or doc explains to go to the settings and enable it, or install steam via commands or using GUI.

If the application Kdenlive stopped to work without any error message, then you can go to the source git page and look for issues related, and you would appreciate a lot to find all the open source programs and dependencies with their own git pages to find recent issues reported (on Windows is harder as most stuff is hidden and closed).

But if Microsoft Office stop to work without any error message, then yeah, developers needs to send you random steps to hope it fixes your issues, and probably they won't ask you the logs, not much doc to read for this case. I think they have some basic help steps like re-install, clean cache and reboot your device, that doesn't really help when something is crashing hard.

If the documentation you're reading is too technic then you need to improve your tech skills, there is nothing wrong learning how a desktop interface works (as example), in the future you will be able to adapt it to your needs, and it won't force you to accept a change like with WinXP/Win7/Win8/Win10/Win11 interfaces.

…they’re already past the first threshold of “This is all way too much, I’ll never learn that”.

Maybe 3 of 10 people that asked me that actually did anything, other people are just lazy that thinks the work of a programmer is easy, as a programmer we need to read many documentation for everything new or change or update on our development stuff. We not only read but also write documentation, to then, some random guy to ask something you have been writing on your own blog and documentation. Understand then if they just respond you telling to read the docs.

I don't get now where you want to go now. If you want to know about computers then read, if not... just keep using things that marketing sells you. If you want to ask without reading, then better pay for a professional (or ask for someone close to you that knows computers). Like all Windows users do when they have issues. And this would apply online, if you don't pay them, why they need to read for you? Pay for the time professionals spend for you if you can't read. Normally people don't read complex documentation, they just need how to install some app or how to configure something from their desktop or printer drivers, pay or read how to do it, doesn't matter if you are using Windows or Linux, because Windows also crashes and have issues also, Linux is ready for users.

If you make it easy

Anything new is hard, if they are used to Windows as most people, everyone would think Windows is easier than Linux, but it's just because they are used to the other OS. Get used to Linux. Use it, read how it works. Start small. Don't read complex documentation or even try to compile the kernel on your first day.

this whole conversation isn’t about my personal learning

Sorry, I will use "a person" when trying to make examples not related with you.

If you don’t care

I'm super obsessed with Linux, I always tell people to use Linux, I try even the older people to get into Linux, I tell friends to install it and I try to help them. I'm really obsessed with Linux system, I really love it, and it hurts me when people just gets scared when I mention Linux (because that happened to me, some people don't want to hear the "Linux" word).

public image of “complicated”

I think that's what I was talking about Microsoft never going to allow to Linux be popular, they just want it to be a solution for programmers, they don't want people to see Linux for a daily OS. The marketing and mass media is the main issue, if more users uses Linux, more companies will focus their apps for Linux. Until then, we need to read git source pages to see if they made the app for us (anyway, Wine should be able to run it if the app doesn't have many requirements).

isn’t just acceptable, but the norm

It is possible to buy computers with Linux OS already installed, so you can just open the browser and search what you want to know what to do on Linux, for example video editing, you can use Kdenlive and many YouTube tutorials for Linux and you would do it also if you had Windows OS, unless you paid for a teacher, but when someone never touched a Windows, normally they need to seek for tutorials or guides, Windows and Linux has, but Windows is limited and Linux allows you to do much more.

whole point of FOSS to help each other out for free

The "F" in FOSS stands for "Free" and refers to free as in freedom, not just "free as in no cost." You can commercialize your FOSS projects without problem, the whole point of FOSS is the freedom.

Telling people to start out with easy guides is good, but redirecting further questions to docs and git pages builds a wall.

But there are hard and easy guides, just go to the easy guides. The times someone said to me to read the docs, they were right. Often when I want to start a post asking for help or reporting an issue I realize that issue has been reported already or documented before I finish writing it, because I do my searches while I write my issue adding context of it.

If your skills aren't good for that guide, start with something simple, I don't know what kind of issue happens that what you are explaining.

Why should I do the reading for someone without pay? Because I can, I trust my understanding and I want to help them.

I do help anyone, no matter if they use Android, Linux, Windows, Apple... The best way to help them for me is to sit behind them and tell them what steps to take, often they ask me what to do, and then I tell them to read what is on the screen, the app window or the popup, and here I say, "just read, what does it say?" and the text they read is often the response to what they want to do.

Regarding corporate support:

In my current and late companies, we had the choice between a Mac Powerbook (latest model) or a Dell Latitude, also from the latest and more powerful model. With two or three OS flavours: latest Windows, latest Mac OS X or a Linux distro of your choice.

Mac and Windows are managed by the IT department. Linux is managed by us at "own risk" basis (we do have to follow a few security directives though).

If a user has a problem with her Mac or Win10 they get help from the IT department.

If this is a member of the finance department, it is OK for her to lose an hour or two for an IT person to repair it or troubleshoot remotely. If it happens to me, I can resolve almost any issue related to Mac, Windows or Linux in minutes. Thus, waiting for a few hours because I can't tweak a setting myself is a waste of time and lowers my productivity.

That's a fact that not many people think about. Not even people who, like me, are IT professionals and work with Windows or Mac OS X machines linked to large Linux systems.

I also do not understand people who complain about "Linux" (meaning a desktop distro) is "difficult", get a Mac and don't complain, even though it is just alien from the Windows point of view, has less of the "little programs" someone was mentioning in this thread, and has a pretty bad support for anything that's not super-trivial.