However, I would say when talking about Linux specifically, there is a high chance that people talking about stuff being broken are people breaking stuff.
I’m sure you’re right. It used to be complicated to set up printers, bluetooth, audio, but even then once set up they were fine. Now all those and just about anything else you need to manage on the machine has an easy GUI
My wife’s computer runs Linux and she’s never had to use a terminal (she’s not a techie type)
Surely one could use the same exploit to restore the original boot code as the malware used to corrupt it