Between the Material You design and move to break apart the Chrome browser from ChromeOS, now more than ever, ChromeOS is Linux with Google's desktop environment.
Some adobe products are way ahead of the competition (patenting useful stuff) and they integrate nicely with each other. I don't use them out of principle but that's why people use them.
I love my chromebook, 90% of the time when I'm lazing around nothing I need uses more than a browser, although it also runs a debian variant and can run android apps, which is useful occasionally. It's light, doesn't get remotely hot, has no fan noise and the battery lasts ages.
My mother has one because she doesn't need the complexity of windows breaking everything.. she only needs gmail and facebook.
My girlfriend bought a really cheap one from Lenovo. Besides watching movies and browsing the web there's not much you can do because ChromeOS is extremely limiting. Wouldn't ever recommend anyone to buy anything with ChromeOS on it.
They'd probably love a Linux system not by Google just as much.
You could try Mint, it's pretty friendly in my experience, the GUI installer (with the full apt and flathub repos) helps, and Mint can support auto updates which will help the non-tech savvy a lot!
“The button on the computer that also turns it on”
Also, this is exactly why the OS should auto update for people like them, rather than them having to use the updater and fill in their password and whatnot
I mean, it was for on campus use, but I bought one in college to have a cheap note taker and basic homework machine for on campus that wouldn't set me back too far if it got stolen or broken. I had a gaming desktop at home and was in a non-technical major, so it worked out great.