Even Ubuntu is fine (this is coming from Fedora fan). If you are going for the long haul, do the following:

- use LTS. You don't need every 6-mo release.

- don't install packages from random ppas, if you don't know what they are doing to your system. Of course, do not install anything not managed by repositories, that would break your system (If I had a dime for every person that installed hplip/nvidia driver/etc from HP/Nvidia/etc site and just overwritten their apt-managed system files. It worked... until upgrade).

My parents also use Ubuntu; they are using it since 6.06, on the current hardware since 12.04. Upgrading them between LTS releases is non-event, aside the UI changes.

I always found Ubuntu to be easiest to use. No fighting to get GPU drivers to work, or other weird issues. Easy to install things when I was first learning too.

Edit: I meant to ask what people are using that's more stable. Fedora you need to reinstall every few months, Debian has some 'rules to not break Debian' that seem to make it special purpose, centos hates my GPU, trisquel gets very rare updates. I know that all of this is solvable, but Ubuntu seems simpler to set and forget.

Gnome is buggy though. I love it but I sure wish it ran better