It's not the install that's difficult, that is mainly automated nowadays and even recognizes hardware and initiates Network Devices and all that sort of stuff.

The part that catches most people is the compiling, or installing a binary file instead of a source so they don't have to compile it, or even learning to comprehend what any of that means so they can manage their machine on their own.

Yes, it's true, with the money saved they can go take a course to learn the operating system better, but how many people in the general population really want to do this?

The majority of the general population wants to turn on their computer and have it walk and talk for them and do all the work and most of all, just, "work." They won't get that with a UNIX or BSD machine when it comes to doing anything other than normal everday things, and if they had any sort of a minor problem they wouldn't be able to fix it without taking that course you speak of.

Believe me, I wish we all used pure BSD or *NIX machines and everyone took the time to learn about them, we'd have far less problems as far as security and worms and virus' and all that crap, but the bottom line is people don't want that. They want a pretty GUI that makes everything easy for them.