I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiments.

But, I believe Linux has painted itself into the niche corner a little. Linux is fundamentally about freedom -- specifically, freedom of choice. With that choice comes the burden of understanding the implications of your choices. Some of us have a hard time understanding why people don't WANT to choose, but for many, it's better and easier to have someone else figure out the details.

There's no inherent reason someone can't glue the puzzle pieces together (see: Ubuntu, to a very limited extent) and hide the other options that just clutter up the view. But, the more the environment comes "pre-chosen", the less Linux-y it becomes.

Also, Linux software right now is very much dependent on the abilities of the user. Because there's no overarching uniformity, there's no equivalent to InstallShield or Wizards that can ask you a couple questions, then (while spending what feels like an eternity in the background,) make it happen. Grab a driver package from some hardware vendor and you'll see this. It's often a tarball, or a 10MB shell script that packs its own payload into Base64 text. Not exactly point-and-click.