I’ve decided to replace Trisquel by Debian as a recommended GNU/Linux distribution for newcomers. This might be a controversial decision, as we now don’t recommend any GNU endorsed distributions. But newcomers deserve a popular and widely used distribution with plenty of documentation and support from the community. Trisquel is not there yet.
The fact that Debian officially contains only free software is important. They do however make it possible for people to install non-free firmware, should they need to. The same is true for Fedora. GNU makes no compromises in this aspect, but this is actually a big plus for user-friendliness. We all know how much it sucks when your WiFi card is not supported.
Debian is also very stable and secure. This stability comes at a price however–outdated software. But everyday computer users don’t necessarily need the latest and greatest. They simply want things to work and to never break. It’s no accident that Debian is a favorite operating system for servers.
Then there is the huge community of Debian users and developers, free support through the many mailing lists, and the vast amount of documentation available on the Debian website. This is invaluable to new users. We want to make the switch as easy and straightforward as possible for new users.