I would beg to differ. There are a lot of people / kids using it that don't really understand what is going on under the hood.
Also the number of bugs that get marked as Won't Fix that are real problems by upstream doesn't help so a lot of people like myself just don't bother after a while and just end up using something else or living with it being broken.
yet another explanation may be the fractured nature of the eco system. Every time I look at linux software bug trackers a good portion is distro related.
May be another explanation.