The best distro? One that he’ll be able to use easily. One that will get him to actually LIKE the experience.

You don’t want to teach him a lesson by giving him a miserable experience.

You want to teach him a lesson that will let you say “I told you so” for the rest of his life.

Manjaro is pretty easy to use and seems to have good hardware compatibility. A variety of Ubuntu flavors also can mimic Windows and work really well.