Arch or Debian. Depends on their personality and use case. I prefer Arch, but have no problems with recommending Debian and use it on one machine myself.
Edit: after re reading I'd say Debian. Little more stability but it is more annoying if they ever do wana tinker more. OpenSuse is an honorable mention as well!
Gnome is great! My go to... I don't understand people sayin it uses too much ram. My 2011 macbook (has 4gb ram) running arch with vanilla gnome only uses around 700mb at desktop. Not that bad.
If you are super cheap like me, but enjoy well made machines try out an ancient macbook pro. I have a 2011 macbook pro 13" with the first gen (I think?) I5 CPU and 4gb ram. Got it from eBay, it used to belong to a school and someone ground the engraving off the lid, but there is a vinyl skin covering the damage.
It only cost me $40 Canadian, the battery lasts like new, and it came with a new charger. I installed arch Linux, on a new sata ssd, and its been great! WiFi was harder to get setup, but I figured it out. Can't get Bluetooth working...
I love that it has a DVD drive, many ports including Ethernet, SD card, enough USB.
Its slow, but keeps up with everything I do... Mainly use it for watching YouTube, watching my jellyfin library, listening to music, using telegram, light python projects, some web site development with Hugo, and I ssh into my main PC with it.
I am a supporter and ordered the retro demo disk. Itll be here soon :)
Yeah, but depends on the person I guess. Its just so simple, and nice to set up without needing to do any backtracking or opt outs right out of the gate.