Best distro for beginners

[Xatolos]

One thing that might be confusing is the default one-click behavior, that's true, (I got used to single-click so fast I had forgotten about it!)

But as almost everything in KDE changing than behavior is possible:
System Settings -> Input Devices -> Mouse

But other than that? (I'm not payed by KDE, just curious)

Been a few months since I've used KDE so might be a bit confused where my problems were, but connecting to my Wifi wasn't as clear cut as it was on Gnome. And then there is the whole keyring thing that got real annoying very fast. Copy and pasting from an external source if I remember right was a cut and paste by default and not copy so when I removed the copy from my HD later I found out I had no backup anymore (its been awhile and didn't last more then a week with KDE so bare in mind if I have confused a few things).

GDeb wasn't installed (Linux Mint KDE 12), I had to manually figure out why no .deb files would install even though they all stated they were made for Ubuntu/Mint.

Crashed quite commonly (I've heard thats because Ubuntu and Mint treat KDE as a red headed stepchild though and its not KDE's fault, just bad on Ubuntu/Mints setup)

A few other things I would have to use KDE again to fully remember

[Bear]

Ubuntu 12.04

[Myrddin Emrys]

If I had the time, I'd want to show a new user a selection of desktops in VMs or on live CDs, so that they wouldn't get the impression that Linux is synonymous with a single environment, and could choose what they got on with best. Obviously the various Ubuntu variants are good for showcasing some of the possibilities.

If I just wanted to give a Windows user something to use straight out of the box with little in the way of support, I might well go for the familiar interface, LTS status, and good default software selection of Mint 13 MATE (in preference to Cinnamon, which is less complete and slower on limiting hardware).