Any of the large, easy to use distributions should work just fine. I’d recommend a popular distribution because it’ll be easier to get help online. So consider Mint, Fedora, OpenSuse, Ubuntu and maybe Pop!_OS.

I think the main consideration should be which DE (desktop environment) she’d like to use. IMO the main contenders would be:

• KDE - Very configurable, nice looking, a bit heavy.
• Gnome - Simple and very opinionated, so not very configurable, a bit heavy.
• Cinnamon - Should feel familiar to Windows users, a bit faster than KDE and Gnome.
• Cosmic - A middle ground between Gnome’s simplicity and KDE’s configurability, pretty fast.
• XFCE - Very fast and light-weight, fairly configurable, but not very flashy.

Based on which DE she prefers, I’d suggest getting a distribution that comes with said DE by default, for the best possible integration. How do you figure out which DE she likes best? Put Ventoy on a USB stick along with a few different Linux ISOs. Ventoy wil let you choose which one to boot from a menu. You could get the following ISOs:

• Fedora or Ubuntu with Gnome
• OpenSUSE with KDE
• Linux Mint with Cinnamon
• Pop!_OS with Cosmic
• Mint or Ubuntu with XFCE

Download an ISO for each, install Ventoy on a USB stick and copy the ISOs to the stick. Boot into each ISO and play around with the desktop for a bit. When she’s figured out which DE she prefers, install a distribution that comes with that desktop.

The SR-71 is really fast and sleek, sure, but how can it be your favourite when it doesn’t even have a massive gun that goes BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT!..?

Using the command prompt is not coding.

Ackshually, whenever you write something into the command prompt and it works, you’re writing valid Bash (or whatever shell you’re using) code. Bash is a programming language, so technically you are coding.

For example, try typing the following into a terminal:

for ((i = 0; i < 10; i++)); do echo $i; done

You just counted to nine using a loop and a variable!