“Most people don’t want to spend hours mounting and partitioning drives or care about Kernel Versioning or nVidia drivers, they just want to turn their computer on and it works.”
In five years of using Linux (alternating between Ubuntu and Mint) I have never encountered the issues you mentioned. I never became a Unix geek, because Linux does not require me to. Current versions will automatically partition the hard drive for you. Really, those distros of Linux are easier to install than Windows. You might have problems with the newest or exotic machines if the drivers have not been written yet, but I never had any problems installing on an older desktop PC with a generic built-in video card. I bought a Dell dual-core Optiplex at a yard sale for $15. Within a hour, I had replaced Windows XP with the latest Ubuntu “Mate”.
Also, can you still boot Ubuntu from a flash drive or DVD and test compatibility that way?
Linux works well with older systems, too. My laptop is 9 years old and going strong. The first four years under Windows, the remaining 4+ under Linux.