Easy mode: LMDE/Mint. They are all geared towards a good user experience and trying to keep you out of the terminal. I would recommend them to any new Linux user.
For a slightly more advanced experience, Debian with XFCE as the desktop. The installation is slightly less friendly and they expect you to be familiar with using the terminal and tinkering with the guts of your OS from time to time but you can have a ‘lighter’ installation with less background services. (I run Debian on all my machines so I have a bias towards Debian and LMDE).