say what you want, but my family (with no technological literacy to speak of) has been using the following distros with great success:
Linux Mint: my mother. two years since the switch and she loves it. can't say I don't either.
Arch Linux: my significant other. a year since she adopted it, and she can find her way around just fine.
FreeBSD: my father. with i3 and a couple of scripts, he's able to boot up into a single-use environment and do what he wants. very simple and easy and I don't have to touch his laptop for a long time.
so.. user friendly? user friendliness depends on the interface that you slap onto the front of the operating system. turns out, there are different UIs for different purposes!
and that's why linux is a good choice. underneath, it's secure, maintainable, and free. on top, it can look like anything you want, thanks to X and the various DE/WMs.
my mother needs a full-on Windows-like GUI, start menu and all. my SO needs a slim interface so she uses fluxbox, which with a click of her mouse has everything she needs in a convenient menu (plus workspaces), and my father doesn't need anything but a web browser.
the kernel doesn't matter to them if you dress it up nicely.
Linux Mint: my mother. two years since the switch and she loves it. can't say I don't either.
Arch Linux: my significant other. a year since she adopted it, and she can find her way around just fine.
FreeBSD: my father. with i3 and a couple of scripts, he's able to boot up into a single-use environment and do what he wants. very simple and easy and I don't have to touch his laptop for a long time.
so.. user friendly? user friendliness depends on the interface that you slap onto the front of the operating system. turns out, there are different UIs for different purposes!
and that's why linux is a good choice. underneath, it's secure, maintainable, and free. on top, it can look like anything you want, thanks to X and the various DE/WMs.
my mother needs a full-on Windows-like GUI, start menu and all. my SO needs a slim interface so she uses fluxbox, which with a click of her mouse has everything she needs in a convenient menu (plus workspaces), and my father doesn't need anything but a web browser.
the kernel doesn't matter to them if you dress it up nicely.