Doesn't matter though. Every single one of these "casual" users I know has a terribly outdated device with a broken battery that doesn't even charge anymore.

And I agree: if it works, why replace it?

People who care deeply about unplugged battery life aren't on Windows to begin with.

Laptop battery is mostly an issue of inefficient CPUs nowadays. I don't know about other distros, but at least Fedora's default power saving settings give a battery life very much comparable to Windows. Which is obviously still nothing compared to macbooks or even snapdragon laptops.

This doesn't make much sense, ChromeOS is itself Linux, and those are prime "computers for parents" machines.