I rather like the notion of Ubuntu's Unity interface. It reminds me of my favourite window manager, Window Maker, which I'm running at the moment. I recommend Ununtu to those who don't want to muck about much. Like you, I don't have time or the inclination to mess with the config files anymore. Server, yes. Desktops? They need to work pretty much out of the box anymore. This is 2014 afterall, and modern laptops and desktop boxes have support in the latest kernels, either in Linux or FreeBSD.

Linux Mint is even more friendly than Ubuntu if I'm honest. It has all the codecs, various desktop flavours, and is generally what my wife and kids prefer these days.