FooBarrington
You seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding my point, as I didn’t mention the average person’s intelligence in any way. All I’m saying is that minimizing the effort required to really try multiple distributions is a terrible way of introducing people to Linux. It will only lead to frustration and rejection. Choosing your bread doesn’t require investing dozens of hours.
No, it absolutely is hard, and those are bad comparisons. Growing up you interact with bread and cars, and you build a preference based on what you’re taught and what you experience. If I go into a new store and see a dozen types of bread I’ve never eaten, I can still make inferences about their taste, texture etc. This is not the case with Linux distributions - if I’ve never used Linux before, I literally don’t know what the hell I’m doing.
And it’s absolutely unrealistic to expect your average person to try a few out. They won’t be able to decide on technical grounds, and they’ll have to use the distribution for some time to build enough experience for a preference. Going back to your car example, it’s like suggesting people buy a few cars and decide which one they like (since they don’t have the experience to make judgements based on short test drives) - you’re asking them to invest a lot of time for something they don’t really need or want.