I just believe that wanting widespread use while being against simplification/abstraction is an incompatible view.

And I believe people should be able/willing to learn if they want to adopt a new system, especially one that allows so much freedom the standardization you seek is antithetical to it's entire ethos. Just by the existence of both KDE and GNOME you're already "abstracting" things and making it "more difficult" than "you will suck Microsoft's one DE and like it," and that's just two of the DEs to choose, you'd rather there only be GNOME "because it's simpler and will help new people learn?" Well too bad, I like KDE and I like that you're free to choose GNOME. "Thinking people should switch from X to Y is incompatible unless you make Y as much like X as possible," isn't it, we're saying "X is bad, Y is better, try doing things Y's way." Making X like Y isn't "doing it Y's way," it's just windows with extra steps.

That's true, but not all learning is equal.

And not all people learn the same way, you need the pretty pictures, some don't.

whether you're in Japan or in the US, you know a trashcan is somewhere you discard stuff,

Sure, but beyond the trash icon, if you have to compress a file (or do like 99% of things including switch system languages), using the GUI doesn't help if your computer is stuck in Japanese. C'mon dude, Kanji is random symbols regardless of if you're in GUI or CLI, absoLUTELY not independant of language, even Romanji you'd be fucked and you know it.

(or whoever ykwim)

(or whoever ykwim)

And my experience was mildly negative,

Read: it isn't for me

most of my friends prefer Linux

Read: It's me not linux

People love learning and are constantly seeking new things to learn

some

People just would rather learn out of passion than necessity.

Well tbh, welcome to the real world, sometimes you "need" to learn some shit. And if you decide you "need" control over your laptop and to break the shackles of Microsoft without spending $45000 to trade Microsoft's spyware for apple's, then you "need" to learn how to use Linux or BSD, because short of TempleOS that's all that's left. Sucks bro, is what it is.

For a lot of people the computer is nothing more than a medium to do what they want,

Most people never touch anything bigger than their phone outside of work. Let em. If they want freedom they can always choose to learn, they can, they just don't want to.

they don't care about how it works, nor do they want to learn

Hey that's my line. And they barely need to know "how it works," they don't know "how windows works," half of them don't even know what the registry is even if they've used CMD before (looks an awful lot like CLI now that we're mentioning it, and gParted, the GNOME GUI tool, works a lot better than diskpart I'll tell you what) yet they use it just fine. They just need to be able to get by, same as purty-gui'd windows.

Btw, it's fine if Linux just stays being a niche OS for programmers and tech enthusiasts,

Hell it isn't if you're not scared, I know rednecks in trailers and grandmas that use it.

I just find it annoying how every time people point out that Linux and its communities can be newb unfriendly

That's fair, I bet they are unfriendly when you show up saying "linux sucks I don't want to learn make it work" which I for some reason feel probably describes you fairly well. They were always nice to me (short of literally one user on c/linux.ml, chef_koch, but he was banned 4y ago), probably because I was approaching it with a better attitude and a willingness to learn rather than animosity, but who knows.

No the newbs are just too lazy

Some are, you are. I was never told that as a noob showing a willingness to learn. Perhaps this problem is not divorced from "you." "If you meet 5 assholes in a day, maybe you're the asshole."

Lastly, I just like to point out that in this thread OP said GUI are more intuitive, to which you...

And plenty of people learn to garden. Gardening isn't for everyone. Stick to your iphone.