A lot of distro recommendation threads focus on the questions that novices think are important, but leave out the questions people would have after experiencing the differences (things that distro-hoppers might ask). As such, answers vary between “use _____, I found it very user friendly” and “use whatever, you can turn any distro into any other, and tweak it to your needs.”
What are some questions that newbies should ask when deciding on which distro to use as the basis for their system. Things like “what package manager suits my needs and how do I try out different ones without changing distros?” Or “what is a desktop environment/window manager, and how do I figure out which suits me?” Or “how does an init system affect my user experience as a newbie?” Or “how what are the choices made by such-and-such distro during install?”
Bonus points for also answering the questions you propose (I don’t have answers, picked a distro and stuck with it)
I second this. Linux by its nature is very customizable. Once you start asking about it you’re entering the rabbit hole. There’s no way to help someone navigate that if they don’t know what they want – and they wouldn’t, yet, as a beginner.
So I know that recommending the same handful of distros to beginners is trite and has been done do death… but really it’s all you can do until they get a bit more accustomed to the culture, and the community, and they see what’s possible and so on.
As a counterexample look at the people holding on to Windows for dear life and how little weight any Linux suggestion carries with them. You can’t get through to someone who doesn’t want to hear it.