Demonstrably effective
Where’s the logic in looking at something successful and picking a singular thing to be responsible? What seems more likely is you are looking for an idea you are attached to that exists adjacent to something successful. It’s like a Mormon looking for successful Mormon CEOs to then claim the company’s success is due to the Mormon work ethic. It’s like how in Whiplash the Charlie Parker story is venerated and seen as explanatory by the characters.
It’s changeable so I don’t really mind but I hate the XDG default data dirs used by most OSs. Uppercase feels out of place, organizing things based on mine type (ex. “Video”) feels wrong, and wtf is a “Desktop”.
For retro games my answer is probably Yoshi’s Island. If you include modern games I’d likely go with Hollow Knight. If VNs count then Echo.
I think Ubuntu and some other Linux distros are arguably more idiot proof than Windows, especially if used by a child with no former experience with anything. The issue of course, is that people just expect every piece of software to work out of the box, and much software that gets advertised to people, including games, targets Windows. Yes, most stuff works with compatibility layers now and more software is targeting Linux as well. However as soon as a person encounters a piece of software where something doesn’t just work they will probably ditch the OS, not look for fixes or an alternative, especially for something like a game where there is FOMO attached.
It’s there a reason you don’t use a tiling WM with no desktop environment if those are the three things you are looking for?
There are different skills than just physical execution. Pokemon isn’t easy because RNG or because it’s turn based, it’s easy because the NPC team compositions are awful, the AI sucks, and the game only has very lenient soft caps on grinding. A mod like Radical Red solves these things, and I’ve played other turn based games with plenty of RNG which require lots of skill.