You're over complicating things
if you don't know their use case or the hardware they use
Most hardware will work ootb, most use cases is opening the browser. But i do agree a blank "use Linux" is a bit too broad. Something like "Use Mint" or "Use Fedora" is better.
What kind of knowledge do you think linux requires? Installing is like a 5 step process. Once installed any grandma can use GNOME or KDE just fine.
made by the company that has hundreds of paid employees working on it.
You'd have a point there, if the company's aim was solely to make a better product; it's been increasingly about increasing their margins at the expense of the users, advertising as much as possible and buying out the competition.
Typically prices go down, not up. This is already the cheaper version.
main characters of the opposite sex that are good friends
These days you'll get romance with characters of the same sex too, detracting. If you only look at the main characters, maybe. But a show without romance at all? No.
I'm sure some exist, but you're an exception in not wanting that at all; most people want sex appeal and some romance.
Sex is an intrinsic part of being human and influences a lot of our decisions, it's only natural for it to be in our media.
Romance sells. Will they won't they sells. Sex appeal sells.
It might seem cheap to you, but people do want and enjoy that kind of content.
Chromebooks are a privacy nightmare and have shitty lifespans though. It's a poor comparison too because at this point you're buying new hardware instead of installing different software.
Modern distros are very resilient as long as you stick to the big ones, maybe even more than windows. There's plenty of benefits for regular people too. A few off the top of my mind, the OS doesn't have ads, no privacy minefield, less malware. Gotta keep in mind that at the end of the day, most people only use their pc to open the browser.
wine doesn't emulate, it translates api calls.
Installing dotnet shouldn't be necessary afaik and might bork the protonprefix further.