As someone who has worked on Unix systems since 1985, the last thing I would do is inflict Linux on friends and family.
Desktop Linux is a failure. Too many distributions & too many ways of doing things for the average schlub.
MacOS is the only Unix distribution that’s sugar-coated enough for the average schlub to easily use. If friends & family have an iPhone, the integration between Mac & iPhone is a win for those folks.
For the Windows 10 holdouts, buying an adequately configured PC for their use causes a lot of complaints to disappear.
Do yourself a favor and use standard Ubuntu I know there are a ton of awesome Linux distros out there (Btw. I use Arch ;)) but my experience during this journey brought me to the conclusion, that the standard Ubuntu is still the best. It is mainly because, all the drivers work mostly out of the box and the distro does a lot automatically. (Because of that, my parents where able to install a new wireless printer without even calling me...beat that Gentoo ;)) On top of that: The Ubuntu community multilingual and open for newbies.
I would say Mint or straight Ubuntu. Even then, you can choose different desktops and that's just a matter personal taste. Ubuntu itself comes with the gnome desktop now. I'm running Ubuntu KDE version which has the Plasma desktop but it was the last release. Now Ubuntu is strictly going to use Gnome. Mint has the MATE, Cinnamon and xfce versions. Then there's ubuntu flavors, Xubuntu, Lubuntu & Kubuntu, with the former two being lightweight, plain looking versions for old machines.
So for desktops;
Gnome is the only one that works well with a touch screen which is probably why Ubuntu made the switch. I've noticed in the last several years, smaller distros are disappearing and/or people are swapping to the bigger distros. I've also noticed the bigger distros are focusing their efforts more. Ubuntu quit working on Ubuntu Touch and just swapped to Gnome which adds touch compatibility. Some are also redesigning their sites with more focus so that the average person doesn't get blown away by a gazillion pages, most of which are outdated. KDE has just done that and prior to the redesign, there was over 100 apps listed, half of which were outdated. They're narrowing down to a standard set of modern apps and also putting a lot of focus into their Plasma desktop. As such, I suppose I should mention one more distro, KDE Neon which is Ubuntu with KDE apps and Plasma desktop. That elementary OS mentioned in the article is a really nice looking version. I tried it once but forget why I didn't stick with it. Another honorable mention, for those heading off to college, UberStudent is a very polished OS, based on Xubuntu but set up with apps pre-installed and a configuration that are geared towards students.
All the others, debian, arch, red hat based etc are not for non-tech people.
But if the need is just to do common things like using the Internet, email, word processing with security, and do not want to install illegal multimedia codecs, and the person does not want to pay for anything, then they might as well use Linux.
I myself Windows 10 pro, with an upgrade path that flowed from XP, but just installed Linux Mint 19.1 in a 2012 HP G7 notebook to dual boot with Windows 7 (not that Linux is better) which came with it.
Although the default dual boot Mint install broke the W/7 boot which i was able to fix via Windows, Mint did fine in detecting the internal wireless, and enabling the Internet etc, without installing proprietary software.
Once a 64 bit version of Android is offered for Desktops then I hope to load it on a spare drive for the main rig. Thank God for tools and instruction and for those who create and offer them, that they may be used for Good