First, I am posting this response from a Linspire desktop that is about a week old.
That being said, I am a newbie (read less than 6 months) who took a pretty systematic approach to entering the Linux universe. I did a lot of website surfing, live CD looking, and user forum reading.
My first installed distro was Suse 9.1, upgraded to 9.2, because I felt I needed the "security" of the 800-900 pages of printed documentation. Although I browsed the manuals, they weren't really necessary to get up and running. The distro has performed flawlessly, without a hiccup of any kind. The user interface has a very "buttoned-down", corporate feel to it, and I found the user contact points with Novell/Suse to be pretty cold and dis-interested -- if you have ever tried to get any useful information from the Microsoft website(s), the feel is very similar. Also, the user forums did not seem very newbie friendly, but that may just be me.
I have also installed Mepis and Xandros.
Mepis is a nicely constructed distro, easy to install, and get up and running. The user forums are helpful and courteous to the "un-informed". I experienced some troubles with "gremlins" after I got up and running, regarding my network connection -- now its working and now its not. I finally just re-installed and everything works well. I also experienced some trouble with the process of updating, upgrading, installing, un-installing -- the newbie touch corrupted something and I had to re-install again. On the third installation I followed the advice of the owner/guru(?) Wayne, and just left all the software as it came with the installation. I have had no problems since. My sense is that someone who uses this distro, as nice as it is, will still have to be willing to get their hands dirty and tinker under the hood, to keep it running the way you want.
Xandros is marketed as a user friendly distro that makes the transition from Windows to Linux easy. I got involved with it as the company was transitioning from 2.5 to 3.0. That period was very frustrating. Their "support" was not informative, or timely; I got the feeling that the support person was really a marketing person who didn't know anymore than I did. Also, a person could upgrade to the newer version but could not access their software repository to do anything with it. Also, around Christmas time, their server went down, and you couldn't get to the "network" at all. Nothing says more about a company than how they handle change and adversity; I give Xandros a "D" in my experience. Finally, once the network is up and running the choices are very limited, unless you want to go outside their repository and download directly from the internet. I looked at that option, but could not figure out how to configure their "networks" interface to accomplish that. All in all, not a very satisfying experience.
Linspire has some "proprietary" feel to it in a couple of places. First is the install. You have the option to have Linspire take over the whole hard drive, or to install it in a pre-established partition. That means, if you want to install it on the same hard drive as another Linux distro, or heaven forbid, Windows, you have to have your own disk partitioning software to divide up the hard drive. Their installation software doesn't come ready to help you out in that regard, in my opinion, because they believe they should be the only game in town. For a company that loves to take a poke at Microsoft whenever it can, this approach and attitude is very "Microsoftish" to me. That being said, the installation is fast and painless. The default installation has a small fraction of their full range of application choices, so plan on spending another 30-90 minutes on tweaking your applications to fit your needs. The CNR warehouse is easy to use and works great -- their are tons of choices, especially in the multi-media category. The fact that it costs $50 a year doesn't bother me. I spent almost that much each year to have my Windows-world protected from viruses, not to count what I spent on software that I wanted. The time value to have your applications updated continuously makes the idea a no-brainer to me. Also, in order for Linux to become a true competitor to Microsoft, it must have companies like Linspire, Xandros, Mandrake, etc., who charge something for their polished packaging; without them the uninitiated newbie will shy away from the command line distros forever.
There are other easy to use options, but I have only visited their websites. Mandrake, Lycoris, Linaire, and ELX are the ones that jump to mind. I just don't have enough personal experience to comment.
I hope this biased, first person view of a few options has helped.
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