Linux

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.

Biebian.

A lot of folks recommending Mint Cinnamon. I agree, that's a great choice, one of my favorites. If for some reason there are technical problems, you might also try something with KDE, like Kubuntu or Fedora KDE. Also windows-like, even more mainstream than Cinnamon, faster to adopt new shit like Wayland.

Try them all on distrosea.com

My recomendations: Opensuse Leap 16, Mageia 9, Openmandriva Rock and if You want to try a Rolling release Opensuse Tumbleweed, Openmandriva ROME

All the disteos With KDE Plasma

OpenSuse of course

I can recommend Debian or Fedora. They are both mature distros that are pretty easy to install and generally work well with minimal fuss and are easy to maintain. I often see Linux Mint recommend, including in this thread. I've never used it so I can't speak to it. But I have every reason to believe it's a solid choice.

As for transfer process, since you mention using spare disks, NTFS filesystems are supported and you may be able to just copy files off of them. I don't know if bitlocker is supported.

Come on gang! We all know the real answer is Hannah Montana!

I'd suggest 0 change at first : boot on a live USB then connect with her Web accounts (e.g. Firefox Profile) then get an easy win. Sure not 100% will work but she'll be 80% there in minutes. If she hates it, logout, reboot, remove key and that's it.

omnixy, a NixOS fork of omarchy (which aims to serve the best defaults) that isn't maintained by a fascist

A lot of people are going to recommend you mint, I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the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.