Slackware
Slackware is popular with its userbase for its stability and the sheer number of options it makes available, but there are a lot of package management and configuration tasks that have to be done by hand. If you're not already pretty Linux-literate, this could get old fast.
FOR NEWBS?: Nope.
Arch
Arch bills itself as both elegant, which it is, and simple, which it also is -- but only if you're really willing to get your hands dirty managing aspects of the system that most people are used to having automated.
FOR NEWBS?: Almost certainly not.
OpenSUSE is stable, straightforward, and generally quite simple to use. It might lack some of the hand-holding of Mint and Ubuntu, but reasonably computer-literate newbies probably won't need that, anyway.
FOR NEWBS?: Should be as workable as most others. The centralized control center -- "YaST," or "Yet another Setup Tool" -- could prove to be particularly helpful.
Crunchbang
The good news is that it's lightweight, fast, and, once you get it working, pretty slick. The bad news is that that last part can sometimes take a while, depending on what you need Crunchbang to do, and it could require considerable manual configuration.
FOR NEWBS?: For real novices, no way. But for the more tech-savvy, #!, as it's also known, could be surprisingly workable.
