I think you overestimate skills of the average computer user. Most of them don’t even know how to install operating system, even that Windows which came with their own computer. That’s why you shouldn’t recommend them any distro which is easy for average Linux user. They need something very simple and easy for the start up.
Even Debian is a lot harder to use than Mint if you want things like the login page recognising your external monitor and realising that it should be your primary monitor before logging in, especially if a KVM means that it wasn’t attached when you first booted. Or wanting that setup to persist after an nvidia driver update. There’s just so much stuff that a user-focused distro can make easy that most distros don’t make easy!
LFS, Slackware, and Gentoo are the only complicated distros in 2026 and no one recommends those.
I think you overestimate skills of the average computer user. Most of them don’t even know how to install operating system, even that Windows which came with their own computer. That’s why you shouldn’t recommend them any distro which is easy for average Linux user. They need something very simple and easy for the start up.
Even Debian is a lot harder to use than Mint if you want things like the login page recognising your external monitor and realising that it should be your primary monitor before logging in, especially if a KVM means that it wasn’t attached when you first booted. Or wanting that setup to persist after an nvidia driver update. There’s just so much stuff that a user-focused distro can make easy that most distros don’t make easy!