Jesus. Another one of these? Every freaking day. (Promise it’s different)
I personally like mint and pop!os for new users, but for this user I want to try something windows like with more sex appeal. I don’t want to have to touch this computer again. Proprietary software is not an issue/consideration. User is techier than most. What has your experience been with kbuntu? Pros/cons? Other suggestions?
Debian is always the forgotten choice. You can install kde at time of install. It’s stable and can be upgraded in the background automatically even between major versions. Doesn’t have snaps making hell for the user. For any apps they need the newest version of Flatpak is right there in Discover software center.
Sometimes I think “if debian had a flashy website and a few tweaks for user friendliness, then it would be just as attractive as linux mint or ubuntu for new users”, and other times I think “isn’t this exactly what most debian based distros are already?” Would there be a benefit if those projects worked under the debian name, something like debian workstation pure blend, or debian corporate pure blend? I don’t know.
The thing you have to remember is debian packaging is ment to be the most vanilla from upstream with only minor modifications to follow debian packaging guidelines. So tweaking for user friendliness would give you the same problems that debian’s children have. Plus 90% of that user friendliness came from bundling Nvidia firmware in the installer. Which debian does now by default. The only thing you have to do now is maybe install the nvidia-driver package and that’s it.