By which we mean social problems of Linux since its technical problems are hopeless.

So how to improve Linux' popularity and ease of use? How to let people run it ''without'' having to learn it? That's easy, you just provide recipes for everything they could possibly want to do and make it easy for people to find these recipes by organizing them in a LinuxWiki. But judging by all the documentation aimed at novices, it seems that many people who write documentation don't understand what a recipe is. 

Here's the big insight: '''recipes are task-oriented and not tool-oriented'''.

For example, if someone has a specific problem with Samba, a recipe will provide them with the solution for that specific problem, without even mentioning what Samba is, what it does, or how it does it.

It should be possible for a novice user to get an error message, look it up and do exactly what's necessary to fix it. And it wouldn't even be all that difficult on a collaborative wiki. It would just be a matter of formalizing the knowledge that's out there a little bit at a time.

''That would all be very nice.''

(I wouldn't mind seeing a complete recipe for how to compile C++ source or port a program written for another platform.)

See also DirectManipulationVsScripting