Comment by bvnierop

Until a few months ago I would have suggested Pop!_OS. I had been a happy user myself for several years and it's nice that almost everything works out of the box. Personally I recently got a new laptop and switched, but would still have recommended Pop!_OS to a non-expert user. However...

A few months ago my girlfriend started trying Linux and went with Pop!_OS on my advice. For most regular use it does indeed work fine, but she has needs for specific software that only exists for Windows. And that's where quite a few issues appeared. Both on the 22.04 and the new COSMIC version, the Lutris/Wine combination has... quirks. It's a pain to get her software working. It also just randomly _stops_ working. Whereas on a spare machine with just Ubuntu 24.04, all that stuff just works instantly.

Granted, not the most typical usecase, but even non-expert users can have hobbies that require obscure software. And more important than anything is that their software continues to work easily. I'm not sure I would recommend Ubuntu to a non-expert. It has its own quirks.

This comment ended up being less coherent and more ranty than I wanted, but there's a non-expert's Pop!_OS experience.