Most kids start their computing experience with tablets and mobile phones. Gnome has a very similar desktop metaphor being made to work as well on regular computers and tablets. My 9 and 12y/old daughters have never used windows and they are autonomous on the Fedora + Gnome laptop I lend them when needed for their homework or to watch streaming services.
Yes. A lot of people don't work much with computers. It is just our bubble which assumes that. In my case it aren't kids but older persons which succeed well with GNOME (Fedora). I don't have to care a lot and their able to install major upgrades with one prompt. And I'm happy with GNOME as power-user because of the keyboard centric usage.
PS: Most computer courses fail to teach usage of computers. We need to read the computers output, understand it and then input. And for interaction a very "high-level" of the concept how a program works is needed. Instead most computer courses merely teach "and now we click on the blue icon" which leave helpless users. Interestingly TUIs seem to a magnitude better then GUIs, only text and focus on the task. A lean GUI helps somewhat. And websites? Horrible. HN is a seldom exception, just text from left-to-right, top-to-bottom.
Most kids start their computing experience with tablets and mobile phones. Gnome has a very similar desktop metaphor being made to work as well on regular computers and tablets. My 9 and 12y/old daughters have never used windows and they are autonomous on the Fedora + Gnome laptop I lend them when needed for their homework or to watch streaming services.