I would suggest openbsd. it is not user friendly in the "hide all complexity from the user" sense but more like "this system is simple enough to understand yet

I would suggest openbsd. it is not user friendly in the "hide all complexity from the user" sense but more like "this system is simple enough to understand yet full featured enough to work in". The way I like to explain it is. if you like the unix operating environment, It is hard to do better than openbsd for a desktop system. If you are expecting something more like a mac or windows environment, there are options, but I suspect you would be better off with linux(or mac or windows for that matter). Openbsd is comfortable in a way that is hard to explain. While largely this is just what what a person is used to. with obsd I have a good feel on how it works and goes together. something I never really felt with linux. however you do lose a lot of the network effect advantages that linux has.