I personally still don't understand the point behind instances. It seems to just introduce confusion about the sign-up process, and also makes usage unrealiable. I don't understand why it can't just be one large decentralized instance, in a similar (though obviously not exact) way as blockchains were distributed account systems.
All these introduced technical details are deterrance for non-technical users. I would consider myself a very tech savvy user and still have been offput by both Mastodon and Lemmy, but have still pushed myself to both due to their recent corporate counterparts going to shit.
after jumping between distros for a couple years, I'm now at the same point. I just want something stable and easy to use, having documentation from any program I want to install as well as being able to expect .deb files is the best luxury.