I started with ubuntu-based distros (Zorin and Bodhi in particular) and I think one of the greatest challenges I faced as a new user was understanding the various different ways of installing programs: apt and apt-get, ppas, gdebi package installer, compiling from source… and more later came snaps, flatpaks and appimages. This dispersive situation makes the entry bar too high for some users.
On Arch based distros instead you have the AUR which includes almost any software available on linux and with graphical installers like Pamac new users are eased in this wild world.
So in the end I’d say Manjaro would be my top recomendation, it’s nice community and huge noob-friendly documentation are a plus. Probably with XFCE, because it’s intuitive and easily customizable.
I second this and I can recommend EndeavourOS which is basically ARCH with an UI installer. As a desktop environment I can recommend KDE because you can customize a lot.
I started with ubuntu-based distros (Zorin and Bodhi in particular) and I think one of the greatest challenges I faced as a new user was understanding the various different ways of installing programs: apt and apt-get, ppas, gdebi package installer, compiling from source… and more later came snaps, flatpaks and appimages. This dispersive situation makes the entry bar too high for some users. On Arch based distros instead you have the AUR which includes almost any software available on linux and with graphical installers like Pamac new users are eased in this wild world. So in the end I’d say Manjaro would be my top recomendation, it’s nice community and huge noob-friendly documentation are a plus. Probably with XFCE, because it’s intuitive and easily customizable.
I second this and I can recommend EndeavourOS which is basically ARCH with an UI installer. As a desktop environment I can recommend KDE because you can customize a lot.