I think Zorin OS 15 CORE may be best. It has familiar appearance of Win 7 or XP.
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Yeah I have to say, Zorin is really nice and a pleasant surprise. Just started experimenting with Zorin 15 Lite yesterday and I have never seen XFCE look so beautiful and consistent throughout the UI design. Very impressed. 
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I tried different distros, after some time I thought Xubuntu was the best to start with for me and I still use it (now 18.04).
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At one time I would have said Ubuntu or Mint but right now I think MX Linux is probably the easiest to learn and use when you start out. It basically installs many of the programs you will want as a new Linux user and does it in a menu fashion
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I agree, I have been running MX-Linux in a VM and it is very user friendly.
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Itās got to be Xubuntu.
Based on Ubuntu, but with the xfce desktop having a ālookā of Windows 7.
A rock solid foundation with a familiar look.
Plenty of support and applications, easily installed from the Software pool, Synaptic, or using apt from the terminal.
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Trisquel 8.0 on older HP G60-120EM computer 3GiB RAM - I like Trisquel ethos so it will remain having tried many, many distros lately and think MX was about best after Trisquel. Probably the lowest default RAM consumption at 460MiB.
Ubuntu 16.04 though a bit bloated and RAM hungry runs just fine on Dell Latitude Intel(R) Coreā¢ i7-2640M CPU 7.7GiB RAM it too has no problem with calculators or HP printers and happily runs 3D FreeCAD and wine Serif PhotoPlus ā sorry; I donāt know anything about gaming except that it made CAD stations cheaper!
Though dual boot I have not used Win10 and jumped in with Ubuntu and it soon became second nature ā I, at nearly 70, now easily switch and frequently use WinXP-Pro, Ubuntu and Trisquel, which is my favourite on the old HP laptop. Buy Linux manual magazine from local newsagent, bookshop or online ā much better than endlessly staring at the screen! Hope this helps?
Canāt understand all the mint flavoured recommendations ā take a look at āI Loss my printerā under Hardware - wow; what a nightmare for a new user! Unbelievably long thread without a real solution other than timeshift. So impressed with the patience of all concerned.
When you get used to a few flavours you will have fun with the live OS Tails 4.2.2 on a USB stick packing Tor Browser; so fast and silent that I keep forgetting that I am only in RAM. Tails has received the Mozilla Open Source Support Award (2019 and 2016), the Access Innovation Prize (2014), the APC FLOSS prize (2014) and the OpenITP award (2013). 
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Yes , I agree ;MX Linux is superb for any newbie
Frank in County Wicklow -Ireland
With a small amount of effort, OpenSuSE can be just right for a newbie. Learning that YAST is where you install software, configure services to start at boot up, configure wifi and ethernet, everything but the desktop environment. You can also configure wifi during the install and not touch it again. The best thing about OpenSuSE is that you can be a newbie and there are gui configurations for printer, etc., but if you crave granular control, as an expert, you can be satisfied with OpenSuSE.
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Iād prefer Linux mint (debian based) and Manjaro (Arch based) for permanent migration to Linux. A permanent migrant can use these distros
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Ubuntu for many years. Solid distro, huge user base, no problems, why fiddle about with smaller distros?
The choice surely depends on whether you want to get into the distro itself or simply use your computer for ordinary purposes. In the latter case, itās surely best to use a big distro which has had years of refinement.
Cheers,
Martin
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Hey @martin1944 welcome to itāsFOSS 
Surely not so or we would all be using Google-Android, idiotOS or Win10 - Gah 
. 
As for going with mainstream ubuntu 
- what about the massive security risk that Snap invites through the open back doorā¦? 
. 
OMG
Linux Mint
Zorin
Linux lite
Peppermint
MX linux
As far as it goes for real beginners, I tend to agree with @martin1944: A huge user-base and extensive documentation are indeed of great value for them.
Although I avoid snaps, I reckon that for a middle-of-the-road average user, the security concerns around them are not really bigger than those incurred by using a closed source operating system.
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Let me Welcome 2 new posters @martin1944 and @nurska to this forum.
Never can go wrong choosing a winner like Ubuntu. Actually, I would think it would be hard for any average / light user of a PC to argue about using one of the top 5 Distro.
My favorite favor is Cinnamon so far. I have also installed MX and Zorin.
Switching from Win to Linux is a big step. Having a large and mainly friendly support groups helps a lot in the switch over. Every new user of Linux will have basic / simple questions. We need to be able to ask them w/o feeling like we are dumb.
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The biggest complaint I hear from new linux users is linux passwd requirements. I have been
working with PCLinuxOS for a few weeks now and the distro does have some very good points
concerning new users. First is that sudo is not used, second is the rolling release, just tick the
red update and it will do the rest. It isnāt even recommended to use the command line for updating,
Third is that PCLinuxOS can be configured for just using a user login passwd, and never have to
enter another passwd, while using the OS. I can even run Synaptic and Gparted without entering
a passwd.
So PCLinuxOS could have some very good options for a new linux user.
OpenSuSE has an auto login feature where you donāt have to enter your password in order for the computer to boot to the desktop. OpenSuSE has sudo which you can use anytime, but you can also use su to access a root terminal. OpenSuSE has GUI configuration applets in YAST, but you can also access YAST through the command line in the root terminal, or if you know which config files to edit, you can use the terminal to configure the system. These applets are for MOST hardware and services like BOINC, MariaDB, and Apache. There are some things the Desktop Environment provides the applet for configuring things like the printer, wallpaper, etc. OpenSuSE is the only Linux OS that is designed for the newbie as well as all the way to the super user / expert.
Another one you donāt find mentioned much but is very user friendly and supports most wifi cards out of the box is PCLinuxOS. Great beginners distro. Good forum if help is needed also.