Yeah, and if you click enough links on Wikipedia you always wind up at logic, math, or philosophy. At some point, you are going to have to read new words to learn new things. And it will get increasingly technical as you go deeper.

Provided you're willing to dig deep, yes, but Wikipedia usually offers a summary of the term at the top. In the event, I found Wikipedia's explanation of cloud native much more useful than the link to the ublue page about it, or the CNCF's definition.

Scaring folks away to seek out another distro where they will almost certainly have to learn more to get started is hurting your stated cause.

I don't have an accurate sense of how much you'd have to learn about bazzite, so I'll have trust you on this when it comes to the usage. I personally didn't have difficulties with other distros, but I'm also not entirely new to the OS world, so my experience may be skewed.

My proximate issue is the pitch, the entry point, the first impression. Evidently, there are people who come across that term and worry that it may mean what "cloud" in many other contexts means: "Your data is somewhere else you have no control over." And how would they know they're wrong? If they click on the link, they're faced with a stack of technical terms they might not understand. Even if they concluded that nothing explicitly says their system will be running in the cloud, how could they trust that conclusion built on unknowns?That insecurity creates an entry barrier for those looking at the website, the impact of which we can't measure, but that doesn't have to mean it's negligible.

The underlying issue, however, is the philosophy behind doubling down on that. If you're faced with evidence of misunderstandings, people pointing out that barrier, and make a point of not just ignoring it but explicitly saying "Now I want to keep that barrier even more", that speaks to a mindset that I personally am strongly opposed to. Handing people guides and saying "here, climb over that barrier on your own" doesn't fully mitigate that.

Hence, in absence of personal experience on the usage, I'll argue from a position of principle. It's not a mindset I want to endorse, and so I attempt to steer people away from what I perceived as a higher barrier of entry.

The Bazzite homepage also makes numerous references to it being "installable on all your favorite devices" so it becomes quickly apparent to most folks that it isn't hosted "in the cloud".

Thin clients connected to some cloud-hosted VM are also installable on many devices. Microsoft 365 is available as apps, but still runs in the cloud (but it doesn't even pitch that, it just says "all in one place" - the mention of cloud is further down the page, after some other feature pitches). How would I know "native" doesn't mean "lives in the cloud"? It wouldn't be the first time marketing fudges terms.

And again, I advise against making assumptions about what becomes apparent to most folks. Most folks aren't confident in their technical understanding and may err on the side of caution. I've tried guiding people through the simplest things, and if there was one detail they weren't sure they understood, the immediate response was to abort the process for fear of breaking something. A message box pops up and they panic "Aaah what's happening, what does that mean" because they don't trust their understanding. I've watched people click on some explanation, get confused at some term and resort to fleeing the page back to things they know better..

I get that you don't like the term cloud native image

I have no issue with the term. Technical terms are useful in their respective technical contexts, where people know what they're a shorthand for. If I talk to a data analyst, I'll use the term DFM. If I talk to a database engineer, I might use the term denormalisation. But if I talk to a sales manager and use either of those, they'll stare at me blankly. And that's what I dislike: Using the term in a context where I feel it's out of place and is known to cause confusion.

really a very small piece of a very user friendly pie

...but may well be the first piece they taste.

But like I said, my issue isn't with the piece of pie, but the baking practice: "The more people tell me they don't like raisins, the more I want to add raisins to spite them." Their pie may otherwise be delicious, but I still wouldn't recommend that baker.

To put a line under all this, I might give Bazzite a try myself, see how I get along with it, but that won't change the fact that I find such a spiteful mentality unfit for recommendation.

I believe in the value of user-friendly presentation, not just systems, because the presentation matters to many users. I also believe that the Linux community at large should present itself more helpful and user-friendly, and comments like the one that sparked the thread don't help that image.

I want to see the Linux ecosystem grow, and I believe that requires a willingness to cater to the least technical users as well. Yes, some amount of learning will be inevitable, but the first contact at least should welcome users as simply and comfortably as possible.

And as a side effect, being more willing to explain and help each other will also help the rest of us. Spite and elitism don't help anyone.