As a new Linux, the hardest time that i have had with it, has been with my hard discs, and having software recognize them or save data on them. Its been a mess to find them on different file explorers and file pickers. I know that longtime users will explain the logic to it, but it is not intuitive. Also understanding root drive, root access and root user. Still not 100% sure i understand it. Things need to get simpler and more self explanatory for Linux to replace windows.
I’m a Linux dinosaur user since mid 00’s and I confirm that despite huge efforts to make it as seamless as possible, it still sucks today.
The problem is that you even have different file pickers (that’s what xdg-desktop-portal tries to mitigate but some applications will do it the traditional way by including toolkit library and filepicker from it, or they will even implement their own), there’s a great freedom to how drives can be mounted and multiple systems to manage drive mounts. It’s managed by gvfs or kio or something else, the behavior is a little differently every time. There are attempts to handle all automatic mounts in /run/media and while most distros conform to that, some won’t.
What I would recommend is to
create your own mountpoints for your internal drives that you don’t expect to change too frequently. It’s done in /etc/fstab. If you’re on KDE, the Partition Manager app can help with setting mount points.
your primary desktop file manager (like Dolphin, Nautilus or Caja) probably has option to copy absolute file paths. Sometimes copying them is easier
If you see GNOME’s file picker, the path is hidden unless you know magical combination of CTRL+L that shows and allows to edit the path
This isn’t intuitive because you can mount anything (mostly) anywhere you want under any path. The whole Linux ecosystem never decided one standard path or mounting method. If you want a disk to be mounted under /home/$USER/Games where /home is also mountpoint to something else, you are free to do so. Desktops automate it and expose UI controls, yet again some apps are from GNOME world, some other from KDE or else and they have different UX and way to expose mounted storage. And I agree it’s not ideal, especially for newcomers.