There is no such operating system as Linux, but there are operating systems built on top of the kernel called Linux. In other words, Linux (a kernel) is not an alternative to Windows (an operating system), but a specific Linux-based OS could be.
IMO it would help if we stopped pretending that Linux is an operating system unto itself and started promoting the actual operating systems that are built on Linux. I see people in this thread arguing over whether “Linux” is user-friendly or not and it’s meaningless because they aren’t actually talking about Linux, but rather some unspecified thing that runs on top of Linux, and may not even be talking about the same thing.