CachyOS with KDE, it works well rounded and has easy to use apps to maid arch super easy and if you need help there’s a convenient discord server filled with helpers, it’s well documented, and we use it so if they need help it would be easier to guide them through things. Heavy recommend. Plus if they don’t like pacman they can always get the flatpak store

HML if it’s for someone else.

Arch, no gui. Let 'em rawdog it from the CLI

Something immutable and auto updating, likely Fedora based because that’s what I use.

I installed Aurora cause immutable and auto update so hard to break anything. And normal user only need Browser, LibreOffice and maybe Thunderbird

Mint, without question. A polished, conservative, stable experience with Ubuntu’s broad compatibility baked in, and a familiar desktop experience. Few other distributions can deliver that. I’m very technical myself, but past the age of wanting to tinker with every little thing; I jist want an OS that is stable and gets out of my way to let me get things done - and Mint delivers.

Whatever you are comfortable with supporting.

Fedora Silverblue

Linux Mint Debian Edición if the laptop is not brand new.

I would definitely choose Linux Mint 100% :p

I started off with it and its learning curve wasn’t too steep. It uses Calamares for installation, features a built-in app store, and is very familiar to those coming from Windows.

Fedora. That’s what I run on my laptop and it’s great.

I’d put LMDE on it, the familiarity of Mint with the stability of Debian and no fucking snaps.

I’d say mint is great for non tech people (90% of the time it’s the DE and GUI apps that are important rather than the distro, but mint has good ones by default). For former windows power users I’d recommend CachyOS or Fedora. Either way, you can boot from USB for any of these as a live demo; I have images for all 3 + memtest on my ventoy USB.

I put Mint on my brother’s laptop when his hard drive died, he’s not a techie sort of person at all and has had no complaints.

My mom won’t update Mint despite me showing her how, so I switched it to CachyOS since I’d be the one updating it anyway. At least it’s not nearly as annoying for me to work on.