So my standard thing with newbies is to suggest putting it on their old machine rather than dual booting. I feel most people will be amazed at how fast linux runs on their last pc and how slowly windows does on their current and if they dual boot it can lead to lazily keeping it booted in windows were as if the linux is available for web browsing and such it will help getting used to it. What I use I think is good for newbies. Its a lazy mans linux in the sense that it comes with everything you need out of the box. Its called zorin and its an ubuntu lts respin and once installed without doing any further tinkering you can rdp to a windows host, burn a disk, open and edit sound, image, and video files. along with standard web browser and libre office and such. I think most folks could go with it unmodified for most everything they need to do. Since its ubuntu you can add programs from the software program and update with the update program but if you feel the need to do like windows many downloads will have a debian linux option which when double clicked will work fine. also out of the box it has wine with play on linux installed so often times windows programs can be run by right clicking them and telling it to run with wine.
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Try them all on distrosea.com
You could install bunch of popular liveboot distros on USB with ventoy and have them try each one. Just make sure to mention it will run faster when not in a USB.
I'm honestly astounded at how many people are suggesting Mint. I recently switched full time to linux and even as a software dev, Mint has to be one of the worst experiences I've had with a computer. Not only driver issues, but software issues and general buginess. Along with being butt-ugly, I do not think any windows user is going to confuse Mint for Windows.
I switched my wife to Bazzite (not necessarily recommending that) and she literally didn't notice it was a different operating system (even though I told her it was and walked her through it). Bazzite has a nice UI for installing pretty much anything a normie would be thinking to install. The only issue we've had so far is that Dropbox just outright does not work on it. I've filed a bug with them and have been awaiting a response from their dev team for like two months now. I'm sure they'll fix it eventually, but if you need the Dropbox UI (you can use rsync otherwise) then don't choose Bazzite.
As for myself, after trying out like 6 different OSes, I settled on CachyOS. There are still issues, but it's pretty dang stable and they're very fast to fix issues. It's not for a person not willing to touch a terminal at least once though.
I have been thinking this for a while too and it's a toss up between Fedora and Debian for a regular user and if you are gaming then something like PopOS or Bazzite I would want someone non-techy using something that is not a rolling release distro like Arch.
Did this with my SO, they have mint like me. And they like it!
They wanted puppy linux though xD
I can recommend Debian or Fedora. They are both mature distros that are pretty easy to install and generally work well with minimal fuss and are easy to maintain. I often see Linux Mint recommend, including in this thread. I've never used it so I can't speak to it. But I have every reason to believe it's a solid choice.
As for transfer process, since you mention using spare disks, NTFS filesystems are supported and you may be able to just copy files off of them. I don't know if bitlocker is supported.
I'm a fan of the uBlue distros Bazzite (gaming), Aurora (KDE), and Bluefin (Gnome and software devs). Other than that, Mint, Fedora, or Pop beta if you want to try the new Cosmic desktop
A lot of people are going to recommend you mint, I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite or aurora if you don't like gaming is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lxqt is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
A lot of folks recommending Mint Cinnamon. I agree, that's a great choice, one of my favorites. If for some reason there are technical problems, you might also try something with KDE, like Kubuntu or Fedora KDE. Also windows-like, even more mainstream than Cinnamon, faster to adopt new shit like Wayland.
My recomendations: Opensuse Leap 16, Mageia 9, Openmandriva Rock and if You want to try a Rolling release Opensuse Tumbleweed, Openmandriva ROME
All the disteos With KDE Plasma
Come on gang! We all know the real answer is Hannah Montana!