Hmm, yeah I think they can handle it. I've showed them massgrave to not pay microslop for Office and they seemed fine*. It's really not too different than that. And besides, as windows users, they have to had reinstall windows cleanly at least once in their lifetime. Personally I found installing linux distros a lot easier, so they might think that way too.

It's just which distro. and it's mainly for gaming first. So maybe bazzite because it's atomic? But it's relatively new and maybe the community and docs aren't as many as say fedora or ubuntu. as far as I understand it despite bazzite is atomic fedora, there's still some quirks that's not fully applicable fully? So maybe just vanilla fedora? I kind of don't want to suggest ubuntu even if that's what they might have heard of before.

*I know, I know, libre office suites are out there and I personally already use them. But it's being used to it is the thing.