I've been using Linux for almost as long as Linux has been around. Several years ago, frustration with the lack of working device drivers pushed me away for a while until that issue was sorted out. (For those who weren't around, drivers for newfangled things like wireless either did not exist or did not work as claimed. Very often distributions made no effort to include them, so users were left to troll the net looking for advice.)
I suspect failure to configure all hardware during the install is the biggest reason people walk away from Limux. For example, some HP printers require an HP driver. If you have one of them, the usual distribution printer setup routine will not work. HP distributes a simple little GUI that allows the downloading and installation of that driver, and then printer setup. Some distributions include that package, some do not. Few, if any, in my experience, actually run the package during the installation. Users with those HP printers, then, are left on their own to know that they need to find and execute that package. Of course, they won't. There's no reason why they would. They just see Linux that doesn't work. (The HP routine needs to run as root (but does not say so), and, amazingly, some distributions that do include it run it as a normal user, and, of course, it fails.
Distributions that are ideologically driven (e.g., Debian) assume, unwarrantedly, I think, that any and all of their users are similarly motivated. This leads to failure and frustration when users do the install and find some of their hardware does not work for what turns out to be entirely avoidable reasons. These distributions do not include proprietary code because the developers think that's a "sin". In reality, that's self-centered behavior that says to a user, "We don't want to get out hands dirty by including this, so you are on your own." Users don't see the underlying reason Debian or whatever doesn't work. They just see the *Linux* doesn't work, and they walk away.
Users who require 100 percent compatibility with things like Outlook and Office may be disappointed, because in actual practice and usage the Linux clones are not entirely 100 percent compatible.
Users who are not driven by ideology and are not driven by frustration with Windows try Linux, decide it is "as good as Windows" and go back to Windows. Why? Because if they think Linux is only "as good as" Windows, they have no motive to leave Windows. Linux provides nothing they don't already have with Windows. For them, Windows is a comfortable home in which they've invested time and money. They have no motivation to stay with a LibreOffice that's "as good as" Office or to learn GIMP so they can do what they already do in Photoshop, etc., etc.,
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