I think you could say the same about any foreign operating system and any user, regardless of how technical. The more technical have better guesses at where to

I think you could say the same about any foreign operating system and any user, regardless of how technical. The more technical have better guesses at where to find things (e.g., Oh, it's not under 'System', maybe it's under 'Administration') based on familiarity with OS patterns, but if you sat me down in front of a Gentoo box running XFCE, I'd look just as much the fool as the next guy for the first 20 minutes or so (except I'd drop down to shell -- though the same applies for BSD even there.) The best synopsis I heard (I can't remember who said it, nobody famous) was that "The hardest part about learning Linux is UNlearning whatever else you know first." I think that correctly asserts that yeah, you won't find things in the "Control Panel", and you won't be able to "Win+R" for a run dialog, etc. Otherwise, I personally have had nothing but positive feedback from my less technical friends that I've turned on to Ubuntu, except for the usual complaints, or when they have to give up foo application because it doesn't exist (Photoshop, World of Warcraft, whatever.)