I appreciate the folks here being open about their biased opinions, because they are completely out of line with the reality I've seen. I teach IT in a college and I run a non-profit the refurbishes computers.

I have not seen a remotely significant difference between ChromeOS and Linux (with Chrome Installed) for the vast majority of users.

It is true that Linux on ChromeOS is annoyingly fiddly and my suspicion is that this is the Google mind (perhaps subconsciously) not wanting to reveal how generally unnecessary "ChromeOS" would be in a world that collectively "knew that the Linux Desktop existed." And I do mean this "without modification," i.e. most of your top 20ish Distrowatch distros fare perfectly well here.