Three correct answers:

• Mint
• Fedora
• Pop

And a few incorrect answers:

• Ubuntu
• Arch
• Ubuntu again
• Really, don’t go with Ubuntu

Fedora is pretty cool.

Linus Torvalds uses it, so you could say it’s the canonical distribution.

If she's a Windows refugee, Linux Mint.

If she's a Mac refugee, fuck if I know.

If she's a IBM OS/2 refugee, please let me know how to get the drugs she's gotten. I want in.

Popos 24 beta is dope if you like to live dangerously.

Any of the large, easy to use distributions should work just fine. I'd recommend a popular distribution because it'll be easier to get help online. So consider Mint, Fedora, OpenSuse, Ubuntu and maybe Pop!_OS.

I think the main consideration should be which DE (desktop environment) she'd like to use. IMO the main contenders would be:

• KDE - Very configurable, nice looking, a bit heavy.
• Gnome - Simple and very opinionated, so not very configurable, a bit heavy.
• Cinnamon - Should feel familiar to Windows users, a bit faster than KDE and Gnome.
• Cosmic - A middle ground between Gnome's simplicity and KDE's configurability, pretty fast.
• XFCE - Very fast and light-weight, fairly configurable, but not very flashy.

Based on which DE she prefers, I'd suggest getting a distribution that comes with said DE by default, for the best possible integration. How do you figure out which DE she likes best? Put Ventoy on a USB stick along with a few different Linux ISOs. Ventoy wil let you choose which one to boot from a menu. You could get the following ISOs:

• Fedora or Ubuntu with Gnome
• OpenSUSE with KDE
• Linux Mint with Cinnamon
• Pop!_OS with Cosmic
• Mint or Ubuntu with XFCE

Download an ISO for each, install Ventoy on a USB stick and copy the ISOs to the stick. Boot into each ISO and play around with the desktop for a bit. When she's figured out which DE she prefers, install a distribution that comes with that desktop.

Linux Mint is the windows 7 experience of linux. It gets out of the way so you can work. It also has the best in-OS help tools. It's also a bit more conservative in terms of newest features, so it's a lot more reliable.

If she does PC gaming, you might want to look at Bazzite rather than Mint. It's a lot better equipped for non-technical people to start gaming. It's basically a preconfigured Fedora linux, so it's got a solid foundation. It's also something called an immutable distro, which basically means it's more difficult to break as the core OS is "read only" (to simplify).

In terms of migrating, best to avoid dual booting off a single disk. Microsoft keeps breaking Linux installs (probably on purpose). So best to install a second SSD.

Before you migrate, have her make a list of software she uses and the hardware she has. Best to post that on a forum like this to have more experienced people look for possible issues.

When it gets to migration day, if bitlocker is disabled, you can access your windows data from linux.

Also get her on Lemmy and asking questions directly. The best thing you can teach a low tech person is how to get help.

Personally, I don't think anyone new to Linux at this point, who isn't tech-minded, should be pointed to an X11 environment. So until Mint devs have ported Muffin into a Wayland compositor, I wouldn't recommend it. They're used to a shiny experience visually, so I'd go with Plasma 6 running on Fedora or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.

I guess a good question would be what software you plan on using. If it's something more reliant on frequent updates and feature releases like gaming, the choice would be a bit different compared to something like office work or common browsing, where stability would be prioritized (at the cost of slower updates).

Mint, for example, is a great jumping off point for Windows users because of the familiar User Interface and a focus on stability and lack of prior knowledge required - but it lags behind when it comes to cutting edge stuff for things like gaming.

Mint for Windows refugees

Fedora for Mac Refugees

My choice: Bazzite GNOME for Gamers, Children and Grandmas. It's pretty, is damn indestructible and has a speedy app store with loads of cool free apps.

Distro:

• First choice: Mint Cinnamon
• If the GPU is very shitty: Elementary OS (Mint Cinnamon expects a basic level of GPU performance)
• If Mint/Elementary are too simple: Fedora KDE

Process:

• For fully switching: Obtain an external hard drive, copy the contents of the Windows partition(s) to it and install your preferred distro so that it takes over the entire computer. This is the most stable way.
• For dual booting: Buy an SSD for Linux, disconnect the Windows drive and install your distro of choice so that it takes up the entire space. Reconnect the Windows drive afterwards and set boot priorities in UEFI.

One More Tip: Don't frontload them with information, but teach them one thing: How search for and install packages through the GUI (Mint Software Manager/Elementary Store/KDE Discover). Tell them that it's more like a smartphone apps and downloading software from websites should be a last resort.

Fedora. I would not have said that two years, but I am blown away by how easy and up to date it is.

And I am normally an Arch person.

OpenSuse of course

Mint Cinnamon. Just make sure to change the background before she sees it. The first impression is god awful with that stock background.

I think basically all the default backgrounds aren't great. There are a few passable ones but that's it.

Hannah Montana

It's dead simple. It is a meme. They may find that funny and humor and novelty help beginners ease into new environments.

https://hannahmontana.sourceforge.net/ but you should install something else as the main OS

Just set this as the first thing to boot and then teach them to remove it

Coming up on 10 years since I switched from windows to Linux. I tried Ubuntu and absolutely hated it, so much so that I switched back to windows at first. But I kept reading and tried ZorinOS, and that got me comfortable with Linux, it was a little buggy but I could understand it.

After a few months with ZorinOS I switched to Linux Mint and have been running Mint for 9 years. Recently my 76 year old mother who has trouble with some basic computer stuff said she'd like to try Linux and asked me to help her, I made a live USB of Mint for her to try and she told me "I can understand this, it's like windows 7!". If she can get Mint, I feel totally confident recommending it to new users.

A lot of people are going to recommend you mint, I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.

I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite or aurora if you don't like gaming is objectively a better starting place for beginners.

The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).

How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.

Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.

Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lxqt is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.

I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.

Well quite obvious: as the name "Debian" was coined to celebrate the union between Debra and Ian, makes it a de facto choice! ;)

I loved Mint. It's still great. Recently I installed Linux on a family member's laptop which is not upgradeable to Windows 11. Hate to say it (and I may be a bit petty here): Mint looks dated, Cinnamon needs a facelift.

That was a reason I went with Zorin. It clearly tries to transition users that come from Windows with it's design (honestly, it's modded Gnome looks awesome). Even running .exe files is as simple as just opening them. Zorin will either just run them or suggest a Linux alternative. Had no issues with that OS so far.

That said, Mint or Ubuntu are solid choices for beginners (and pros alike).

The distro I find easiest to recommend to folk in my life looking to move to Linux is the distro that I'm using/most familiar with, because it makes it easier to help them out if they run in to an issue.

I use CachyOS, and previously, I was trying to support Mint etc, but having zero experience with the way the way Mint handles packages, with its default apps, update process etc, I found myself having to research an OS I don't use, and offer 2nd hand advice. I moved them over to CachyOS, and even though technically, it's not as beginner friendly, my day to day familiarity with it meant that it was easier to help out when troubles arose.

If you're supporting it, then one you are familiar with would be my recommendation. If you're both beginners, then Mint.