I have used 2-3 linux distributions so far and they seem similar in many ways, but the subtle diff's seem to trip you up most often.
I will agree that there can sometimes be 'surprises' vis. Amiga installation programs, BUT, compared to linux's 'freeform' approach (as you see stuff in usr/bin, /usr/sbin/, other places/, /root/, etc. etc. etc. - if there are rules, possibly only red hat or suse follows them) I still say it's a lot less complicated on the Amiga - at least I know there's only a few dirs that ever get stuff installed in them and where to look for that stuff - linux? not even.
FreeBSD seems to be somewhere in the middle - the installation(s) seem more uniform but I keep bumping up against weird root-only permissions issues that defy an su command and have to be changed by actually LOGGING in as root, etc. - in other words, almost as much hassle in some cases as WinBlows. No '70 reboots per install', but sometimes far more annoying than it should be.
To your point about compatibility checks, etc. I don't think the Amiga is any worse than Winblows for sure (although that situation seems to have improved of late despite the OS continuing to get slower and even more bloated on ever faster hardware - can you believe 'Worsta' is going to require ONE GB(!) to run well on a new machine? Jay Miner is rolling over in his grave on that one, to be sure.
kevin