The big push is going to be getting rid of old excel and word macro's and replace sharepoint/onedrive with something else as data migrations are newer as simple in reality as they look in theory.
I have witnessed in person people switching from Windows to macOS have issues adapting to a different operating system and its concepts, like the fact that pressing the X button in the top-left corner doesn't close the application. Therefore I am rather skeptical that you can just throw some Linux distro at a bunch of novice computer users without large amounts of friction.
I'm a sysadmin and have been using Macs on and off since System 7, Windows since 95, and probably 10000 Linux distros/DE combos. Just as a point of reference.
> I'm a sysadmin and have been using ... probably 10000 Linux distros/DE combos
Most of the things I run on Unix systems do not have windows. This doesn't confuse me at all! :)
I know what you mean of course. A GUI application without windows is superficially confusing, but you can certainly imagine something daemon-like that runs all the time and only occasionally requires interaction in the form of configuration or control.
What you're really talking about is document-based applications, which can continue running when no documents (windows) are open. This may be less intuitive if you think about things in a document-centric way, vs an application-centric way. There are advantages and conveniences to both.
Not your main point, but: If they really were novice computer users it would be a snap; the problem is that they aren't -- can't be, if they're already conditioned to Windows being "the standard".
Then again, I think that this is often exaggerated, even for long-time Windows users. What's so hard about switching -- "Oh, but people are so used to all their handy Windows shortcuts!"? Bah -- they don't even know they exist!