I found this site a while back - basically it will ask you a bunch of questions on your usage of your PC, and will came out with a list of recommended distros, and a list of reasons why YOU could like or not like it.
There are some similar sites to this one, but since I’m not familiar with them, I won’t post them. They are simply DuckDuckGo-able though.
I kinda feel like this is better for folks who’ve been at it for a little bit. There are way too many distros claiming to be beginner friendly for a tool like this to be helpful.
I think it’s better to just send them to an easy to install, up to date distro that will suit their needs that has a DE that’s easy to understand but different enough from where they’re coming from to keep them from expecting it to work like windows. Stable updates from a GUI, software availability, and easy to use backup tools are all a plus.
Which OS am I talking about? Hell, I have no idea. Fedora? Maybe Vanilla 2 when it comes out? Certainly nothing Arch based (sorry, guys, I love arch too but it’s not for beginners…).
I honestly think it’s Ubuntu. If we put aside the biases many of us “experienced” users have against Ubuntu/Canonical/snaps, Ubuntu seems like the best choice. Well supported, wide community, sane defaults.
I’d agree if it weren’t for the Snaps bullshit. Because of that, I don’t want to recommend it to anyone because I don’t want to encourage Canonical.