I don’t think I’ve ever followed that workflow to be honest. Except for when doing something niche and way above and beyond something a casual user would do.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually done that after maybe 2010. Package managers are awesome, and package availability is better than ever. Linux has improved massively in this regard since then, but its reputation still seems to be stuck in the “Well, if you’re serious about using Linux, you’re wasting your time with Ubuntu. You should install Gentoo and build everything yourself!” era.

Even on the odd occasion that I’m unable to find something in the repos, I’d sooner just find the project’s git repo, clone it and build it. Most of the time now, they have some sort of automated helper script that will build and install the package for you, and when they don’t, you’ve gone way off the beaten path and left behind any semblance of pretending to be an average user. But, hey, at least make isn’t a terribly difficult command to use.

If someone is already informed enough to care about having a local account under Windows, seek out ways to circumvent the normal account procedure and feels comfortable applying edits to the registry, I think they have already excluded themselves from the category of people who are unwilling to invest time and effort to get their computer/OS running how they want.

What you wrote may apply to the general public, but not for the circumstances discussed in the post you’re replying to.

I think it’s just old tribal knowledge that people have turned into a meme at this point, just like people thinking all versions of Linux are so arcane and obtuse, you need to be a master programmer or hacker to be able to make it run without crashing. When I was first starting out with it, around 2009, I remember having somewhat regular issues with my sound and my wifi just randomly deciding I was unworthy of either sound or wireless internet access. That was across distros when I was initially checking things out, as well as across releases of the same distro once I (mostly) settled down.

These days, I can’t remember the last time I had such problems that weren’t either the result of a specific bug that was shortly fixed, or the fallout of something stupid I did myself while tinkering with something and not paying enough attention.