No joke, Emacs's Magit is the best git client I've ever used.
If you run it as:
emacs -e "(magit-status)"
then you open right into the magit interface.
Check out the manual[1]. You'll find that it's not too heavy on traditional emacs-isms, it's a lot more about pop-up menus that act as interactive cheat-sheets for the easy-to-memorize the vim-like verb-modifier language of single key presses it builds up.
Several modern Emacs modes have the same qualities as Magit, including great design and modal keybindings. For example, Notmuch is in my opinion the best email client of any platform (excluding Gnus for some really specialized use cases). Org is probably the other obvious example.
I think viewing Emacs as a text editor is too narrow-minded. Emacs is really a text-mode Lisp machine, a platform where editing modes are applications. In fact, some people's favorite Vi implementation is Evil for Emacs.
First choice - Lubuntu 16.04 LTS, it is quite Window$ like in function and appearance.
Second - Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, the full version of Lubuntu. Not quite as Window$ like but close enough for most people to run without too much trouble. My wife’s new build kitchen PC came to life with Ubuntu 14.04, upped to 16.04, and she has had very few issues.
Third - Maybe Fedora, I am trying it out now and seems to install and run very well.
Stay away from Mint, Mate and Cinnamon, they are just skins for Ubuntu and a new comer does not need another later of confusion. I could not get Arch or Manjaro to install and run in either of my test machines. One is a 32 bit laptop, and Arch does not have a 32 bit version. Stick with a distribution that will write to a USB via UnetBootin or RUFUS, a newbie will not run 5 lines of code to build a USB drive.
If you run it as:
then you open right into the magit interface.Check out the manual[1]. You'll find that it's not too heavy on traditional emacs-isms, it's a lot more about pop-up menus that act as interactive cheat-sheets for the easy-to-memorize the vim-like verb-modifier language of single key presses it builds up.
[1]https://magit.vc/manual/magit.html