Mint
Mint is the first new Linux OS to challenge for the crown of "what Linux experts would recommend of total newbies" in years. It's reasonably lightweight and intuitive, and its default desktop experience is quite easy on the eyes.
FOR NEWBS?: Absolutely.
Ubuntu
Still arguably the most important desktop distro, Ubuntu is designed to be as easy to use and as seamless as certain proprietary operating systems. It's not everyone's cup of tea -- more serious Linux geeks frequently aren't developer Canonical's biggest fans -- but it's still a great transitional OS.
FOR NEWBS?: Definitely.
Debian
Debian is the underpinning of a slew of other Linux distributions, including Ubuntu and Mint. It's complicated, serious, and a bit staid, but also enormously flexible. And it's lightweight enough to provide solid performance out of the box.
FOR NEWBS?: It's not necessarily designed for the novice, but the tech-savvier newbie shouldn't have many problems.
Fedora
Sprung from the fertile open-source loins of Red Hat, Fedora is a long-standing Linux distro with a ton of flexibility and lots of customization possibilities. If the cool kids used Linux, they'd use Fedora.
FOR NEWBS?: Kind of -- Fedora gates off non-free software, which might confuse or frustrate less-technical users. But it's generally pretty accessible.
ElementaryOS
ElementaryOS's first stable release, Luna, launched last year to widespread praise for its simple and clean aesthetics. It's pretty and intuitive enough to pull any number of converts.
FOR NEWBS?: Probably, although the default browser's lack of Flash support could prove to be a minor headache for some.
PCLinuxOS
Some people, however, really don't want to convert at any price. And for them, there's PCLinuxOS, a distribution that does most of what a certain very widely used proprietary OS does.
FOR NEWBS?: Windows refugees, definitely. Others, probably.
