Edit: But to your point, anyone brave enough to drop an Ubuntu Live CD into their system 25 years ago often had a surprisingly smooth path and could already do critical stuff like email or writing a document. (But there were many more exceptions, edge cases, and work arounds, back then.)

Anyone dropping an Ubungu Live CD into their system 25 years ago in January 2001 must have been a time traveller, since the first release of Ubuntu was only out in October 2004, only available as an install CD, and there wasn't an Ubuntu Live CD until the first test release of an Ubuntu Live CD in June 2006.

I remember when Live CDs first became a thing. I thought, for sure, now, everybody will be able to switch to Linux, without fear, able to try it first, before installing to their hard drive.

Hah!

Here we are 20 calendar years later, ~ and sure, it's probably around 10x the size of userbase of desktop GNU+Linux, rising past 5% market share, but it's hardly "The Year Of The Linux Desktop" Like I thought was coming in 2007, especially when the next increment of bloat and abuse that is Win7 came along. ... Maybe for sure now that Win11's taking screenshots every 10 seconds and calling home, and all the adverts in your operating system interface and further nerfed capabilities and annoying babying and and and.... Just how many abuses can Microsoft keep getting away with and people will still keep using it!? Now you need to buy hyper inflated new hardware too?? It's almost like they're trying their hardest to sluff off their userbase, but people keep staying for the punishment of the intentional enshitifications.