Switching to Linux requires a certain level of technical skill and patience that the majority of people don’t have.

It does. However, it was a technical news website so I assumed the audience had a higher than average technical affinity. This seems to have been a bad assumption

That said, installing Linux is easier than people imagine. Most of the time you download the image and follow some short instructions.

Admittedly, the minority of the time you might have to troubleshoot.