Yes. There may be people here who try to convince you otherwise, but unless you consider spending time trying to fix computers a hobby, you won't enjoy it. Tracking down binary drivers, figuring out dependency issues, and googling for command line syntaxes gets frustrating after awhile. And that's before you even get to your point about .avis (and their codecs), Office compatibility, and more.
I'm a Mac user, and I can appreciate your stance (though a Mac Mini isn't expensive), so I won't try to push it on you.
Thus, I'll simply recommend going for Windows 8. As always, the bark is louder than the bite, and while you'll be annoyed at a few of the changes (lack of a start button, "Metro" interface), you can largely use it just like previous versions. It's not as bad as those make it out to be.
I'm a technical guy. I use Linux on my servers (hosted in the Amazon cloud). But I wouldn't ever recommend Linux to anyone on a desktop unless they have a ton of free time and patience.
You’re right. Windows 8 isn’t so bad, but neither is being covered in tar and set on fire.
It’s just a minor inconvenience.
Doing what?
What you really want Linux for ....is trouble free surfing on the World Wide Danger Zone..
Windows is OK till it encounters the Web and the Virus and Trojans....
If Linux were hard, I wouldn't be able to use it. But I've been using it for quite a while now. Admittedly, the first distros I tried gave me some of the troubles you mentioned above. But there are other distros -- PCLinuxOS for one -- with which I encountered none of the difficulties you listed there. None.
I even installed PCLinuxOS on my wife's laptop. She knows even less about computers than I do, and the times she's needed to ask me how to do something on that computer I can count on one hand.