Sorry, I don’t mean to accuse you of anything. I should’ve made it more clear that most people just won’t try new things no matter how easy you make it for them. They will literally turn their brain off if it’s outside of their comfort zone no matter if it’s just the tiniest of steps.

Your mistake was telling them something scary and leaving, the very first pixel out of place and they gave up. People don’t want you to give them projects, they want you to fix their problems.

If it’s a system you’re sure of the use case then set it up to be a Windows clone like you planned and tell them you found a (locked down and lightweight) long service life distro based on Windows 8 or something. Yes, it’s a lie. Nobody will care as long as it works generally like they’re used to, I promise. But if you have to explain caveats to their normal workflow like you’re giving a tutorial then you might as well not bother.