Linux is perfect for teaching someone to be tech literate, which should be your ultimate goal.
Just because someone can follow a pictorial cookbook more easily is no reason to not teach them to read. Being tech literate is a little more important than people generally realize, just for having a cursory understanding of how things really work.
I recommend Ubuntu.
It’s development has been focused on teaching and enabling tech literacy across the world since its inception, and is designed to be very user friendly.
Don’t give them ideas, this is exactly the type of shit they want to enact