Most of the time you can find some gui app that will take place of the command line.
For instance: in (k)ubuntu/mint/debian if you want to install something more than likely it is already in the software repository. Do a search in Synaptic to find what you want and click intstall. Done. Just as easy as windows....but it's free!

This is why I don't like Ubuntu. It gives people an illusion of happy GUI-land, and then when they inevitably need to use the CLI, or edit configuration files - it all goes horribly wrong.

The fact that the Ubuntu package maintainers routinely break the BOINC port has nothing to do with my opinion at all.

This should be interesting, and the replies may depend on how many different distributions, GUIs, & kernels people have tried. Many of the versions available today weren't available when I started, and none of them had boot-able CD/DVD versions.

I started with SuSE 8.2, which came with a limited version of KDE and relied on the command line interface for almost everything important. I now use openSuSE 11.0, which has multiple user interfaces available, and can do almost everything from the gui. openSuSE has at least two package installers available, although I currently prefer to use yast with rpm files, and some programs come with their own installers. Also, most packages come with 'dial home' info so updates can be easily obtained by the software manager.
openSuSE

One of the 'hazards' you might encounter with Linux is that there is so many packages available, you can easily overwhelm yourself if you add too many sources to your package list.

While I understand that a mostly self-installing Boinc package does exist, it wasn't available when I first installed, thus I haven't tried it.

I think my slowest machine is my firewall computer, which has a P3-600E processor and 512M of PC-100 ram (it used to be my video editing computer, complete with SCSI drives!). It has no problem running Linux with the basic GUI, although I doubt the video card would support many 3D effects. The only time it's rebooted is when the power goes out longer than the UPS will support.

Got Ubuntu running and BOINC installed and crunching in less than an hour. Very pleased with myself. A quick google gave me the commands I needed to run .sh and unpackage .tar.gz files. Some minor housekeeping tasks elude me at present, but the important thing is that it's crunching.

I like the fact that I've got to grips with it so quickly, but I couldn't use it on my main home PC at present as it still doesn't feel intuitive enough (for someone who has been using Windows since v3.1).

As Dark Angel mentioned, the configuration of Windows is pretty much consistent - you can sit down at any Windows PC and know how to do anything you need to, but I find that with Linux I am more in control of the PC and how it works, whereas I do feel that Windows considers itself to be the boss!

I would compare it to a car. If you are a mechanic then you want to know how all the bits work and to tune and customise - because you have the skills. Many people just want to get into their cars and get from A to B - when they buy a car they just want to drive it off the forecourt. If they had to fiddle around under the bonnet to get it started then they wouldn't bother with it.

For me, I'm somewhere in the middle - I want an OS that will work "out of the box", but I want more control over what it does and how it does it and I'm interested to know how it works without getting into the DEEP techie stuff... I'm hoping that Ubuntu is the right choice for that?

It's only day 1 of my Linux experimentation, but I'm not put off yet.

I guess Ubuntu is what you are looking for

its nice and easy and very stable

Enjoy