I've used and loved Xubuntu for a while now, but I've recently installed Linux Mint w/ Cinnamon on a new computer, and I think it's a little bit more polished.

I've used and loved Xubuntu for a while now, but I've recently installed Linux Mint w/ Cinnamon on a new computer, and I think it's a little bit more polished. Both are much better than plain Ubuntu. Linux Mint + Cinnamon is probably the distro I'd recommend to most people, especially if they're coming from Windows. If their computer's a bit older, I'd go with Xubuntu, and if it's really old, probably Lubuntu.