I don't understand this reasoning. No one forces you to compile from source or even use the terminal. Likewise no one needs to touch the Windows registry or firewall settings if they don't want to.
There's a distro for almost everything and there's certainly one for the unassuming family PC - Ubuntu. It passes the "Mom test" for me and keeps my technology hesitant mother very happy. Email, web browsing, online banking, photo sharing, printing/scanning just works. If anything it's easier than "that Windows thing" (as she describes it). The Dash in Unity and the Launcher 'just work' and have made computing a much more pleasant experience for her. With the exception of very occasional hardware support issues (I change printers maybe every 2 years) it's more than convinced me Ubuntu is a very viable family OS.
There's a distro for almost everything and there's certainly one for the unassuming family PC - Ubuntu. It passes the "Mom test" for me and keeps my technology hesitant mother very happy. Email, web browsing, online banking, photo sharing, printing/scanning just works. If anything it's easier than "that Windows thing" (as she describes it). The Dash in Unity and the Launcher 'just work' and have made computing a much more pleasant experience for her. With the exception of very occasional hardware support issues (I change printers maybe every 2 years) it's more than convinced me Ubuntu is a very viable family OS.